By Ron Bingham
Four actors playing: a cafe owner, a sick child, a precious artwork, a couple of Nazi handlers of stolen goods, a sexy lady, an ingenue who is a crack codebreaker, a pair of builders who may be more than they appear, an unemployed loser, an incompetent baker, a couple of the verge of a breakdown, a couple of sweatly naked male torso’s and one or two more I may have missed.
The plot of this play is (approximately) a cafe is being forced to close because the parents of a sick child who ate a loaf of bread from there are suing the cafe. The owners need to come up with some cash quick to pay the bills but that’s not important. This show is really giving the audience a chance to see four very talented actors going crazy trying to play all the listed parts, in order to keep the story going, while wrestling with a lot of props and costumes. Sometimes they fail, but they always managed to incorporate the accidents into the show, never stopping for a second, until the inevitable satisfying ending (for those that survive).
If you are after an hour of frenetic and well acted action/drama/heist/murder/mystery/noir theatre, which will leave you breathless with laughter, then you must book a ticket for Café Ruse. Once the word gets out on the street, there won’t be any chance of picking up tickets, so take my advice and book now. It’s on at 2pm, making it the perfect way to start an afternoon of Festival fun.
Café Ruse is on at Zoo Southside.
For Tickets and more information go to the Edinburgh Fringe Website: