Make mine a Triple Espresso

The authors and original cast of Triple Espresso. Left to right: Michael Pearce Donley, Bill Arnold and Bob Stromberg

Fourteen years ago, three friends in Minneapolis got together and put on a show. Just like Mickey and Judy in those 1930s movies about young entertainers, Michael Pearce Donley, Bill Arnold and Bob Stromberg combined their talents and built a show around them. The result wasn’t a musical in a barn. It was a comedy show set in a coffee shop.

Triple Espresso is one of the biggest hits never to have played New York. After Donley, Arnold and Stromberg produced the show in Minneapolis – where it ran for 12 years – the show was staged in Chicago, Seattle, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Dublin, London, Munich, Berlin and many more cities, playing before an estimated total of some 1.5 million theatergoers.

When Actors Theatre first presented Triple Espresso, it demolished all box office records. Naturally, it’s back. For information on the current production at Actors Theatre, go to this webpage.

We asked author Bill Arnold, whose character in the show is called Buzz Maxwell, three questions about the show:

CulturalDesert: Did this show originate in response to the chic for coffee, coffee, coffee?

Arnold: The show’s genesis was a desire to collaborate with friends, and we were trying to come up with an alternative to having the show in a nightclub. Maybe we were even a little visionary 14 years ago when we thought that coffee shops would evolve to where there would be live entertainment in them. Coffee shops were quickly becoming social meeting places, makeshift offices for the creative types, or corner caffeine stands for people who sleep 14 minutes a day. We also wrote a character in the show that is heard but never seen. He is a smooth operator who deals on real estate because he took a ‘how to buy real estate in foreclosure’ seminar. He also gets coffee beans shipped fresh from Africa. He is a complete corner cutter, except he is a purest for coffee even if he overcharges for it. So we had fun creating this coffee shop with its eccentric owner whom the audience never meets. Also, we all really like coffee.

CulturalDesert: How difficult is it for a new play to hit when it hasn’t been filtered through New York?

Arnold: New York can be utterly brutal. We have had New York producers come see the show that loved it. They see it for what it is, a hilarious night out. This show makes you laugh and feel good about what you are laughing at. There is no social or political agenda, no swearing, sexual innuendo, or mean spirited jokes. And it’s still hilarious. Their advice was if you can work cities without New York, go for it! So far we have done about 45 cities and 6 countries. It’s funny -if we had gone to New York and they’d fried us, most of these cities would have taken a pass on us. The down side is we are not always a known commodity when we open in a city, but we find our audience because the word of mouth is so insane. It is not uncommon to have people see it 2-4 times in a 3 week run. We have been compared to like an evening with the Marx Brothers.

CulturalDesert: When did you know you were funny?

Arnold: Well, maybe funny was thrust on me when I was born on April Fool’s day. Comedians are just trained observers. I grew up with four sisters and hardly got a word in edgewise. I did a lot of listening and observing. My sisters would laugh at my deadpan responses. I also had a lot of difficult things happen when I was young and I discovered humor could be a tool that alleviated the pressure. Today I realize that providing laughter to folks is a gift, and I like to give it as often as I can.