Triple Espresso
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Triple Espresso...A Highly Caffeinated Comedy is a vaudeville style comedy which opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1996 and enjoyed popular long-standing runs in Minneapolis and San Diego, California, (where it holds the record of longest continuously running show in San Diego), as well as short engagements elsewhere in six countries (the United States, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Germany). The production in Belgium was the first foreign language version of the show, playing in the city of Ghent, in Flemish. A second foreign language production in German has played in Munich and Berlin. The show closed in Minneapolis in April 2008, but returned for a holiday run that fall (November through February) and in the subsequent years returned for limited holiday season engagements. Triple Espresso is scheduled to return to Minneapolis for a 2011-2012 Holiday Season (November 16, 2011 - January 8, 2012) at the Southern Theater in the West Bank district of Minneapolis. This will be the first time the show has played in Minneapolis at a theater other than the Music Box, where the show originated in 1996.
The plot revolves around three show-biz has-beens: lounge singer Hugh Butternut, an exuberant musician with a vulnerable soul who has spent the past two and a half decades performing in a coffee bar; the titular Triple Espresso; Bobby Bean, an irrepressible, but not-too-sharp entertainer; and taciturn magician Buzz Maxwell; the group's straight man and the brains behind the unintentional comedy team within the show. The three gather on Hugh’s 25th anniversary at the coffeehouse to retell and memorialize their mediocre show-business careers, including a final disastrous performance on The Mike Douglas Show. The plot is designed to make room for a series of comedic sketches which showcase the talents of the three-man cast, originally the show’s writers: musician Michael Pearce Donley, humorist/physical comedian[1]Bob Stromberg and magician/comedian Bill Arnold. (Others are now trained in the roles, and casts rotate based on location and availability of actors.) Their talents include everything from music and magic to choreographed ape imitations and shadow puppets, and the bits occasionally involve the audience as well.
Its run in Minneapolis at the Music Box was scheduled to end on April 12, 2008; however, it was extended until April 27, 2008. Original cast members Michael Pearce Donley and Bill Arnold performed the final show, with Brian Kelly playing the part of Bobby Bean.
The show’s "home base" was the 440-seat Music Box Theatre on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, but in 2011 it will play at the Southern Theater on Washington Avenue in the Historic Seven Corners district of the Minneapolis West Bank.
