The new regretful play by A. R. Garcia will need work before it’s good to a final drop.
“She Hates Coffee,” a new play created and co-directed by A. R. Garcia, is melodrama of a exemplary tenor. A ardent romance, a movement follows a impression Jaden (Kevin Grullon) on a miscarry after being left by his bride (Segen Genesis) during a altar. Within his bar/cafe, called ‘Jaden’s Cafe,’ he falls into another attribute as his employees, friends and family watch on from adjoining tables. “She Hates Coffee” swings for a regretful fences, perplexing to move a New York/Dominican spin to this rather elementary plot. Therefore, it is a sum of a characters and discourse that will set this prolongation detached from a competitors.
Unfortunately, that is where Garcia’s book lets down his actors. Though from vocalization to a producers, it is transparent that this plan has been in rehearsal for years, what has been brought to a theatre feels some-more like a initial breeze or outline than a entirely satisfied production. Characters seem to come floating out of the ether on to a cafeteria set. For instance, Jaden’s dual friends, a understanding one played by Leon Joseph, a some-more hidebound one by Patrick Brancato, quite seem to miss definition. Brancato, who does move a acquire joining to his role as Tony, has a prolonged core theatre debate detailing to a assembly how now that he is successful, he is looking to find a improved category of regretful one-night stands, and about how nothing of a women that they accommodate can accommodate this standard. But a assembly is never given context. What is Tony successful at? What is this pursuit that he is so successful during outward of unresolved out during his friend’s bar and attack on anything that moves? We’ll never know. Almost nothing of the characters seem to have a life outward a walls of a set.
The same problem plagues a categorical regretful seductiveness in a play, Rebecca, played by Krislen Sherrill. She floats into a play, becomes concerned with Jaden by a finish of her initial scene, and then spends a rest of a play mercurially flipping between several polls of emotion, antacid one second, afterwards passionate, that leads to a third act exhibit about her relations to a other characters that leaves a assembly deeply confused by what motivates any of her actions. Sherrill gives a plain opening yet has been given an unfit charge to play, as Rebecca seems to have no inner life and exists mostly as a vamp.
The thinness of a book tends to strike a lead expel hardest overall. The ancillary players regularly tell both Jaden and a delegate regretful interest, Lisa, played by Alexandra Bernal that they are smart, driven and good, this being a kind of play where characters tell other characters their pivotal qualities. Unfortunately for a immature actors, there are no serve sum that they can play off of to make these adjectives come to life. Both Grullon and Bernal feel lost, and yet they make an appealing integrate and have plain chemistry with a ensemble, they are unable to arise above a turn of a material.
Because of a inlet of a text, a actors who surpass in a space tend to have roles that are some-more broadly drawn. Nikaury Rodriguez, personification Jaden’s mother, creates her dual scenes mount out, bringing appetite mostly blank from a rest of a play. Andres Chulisi Rodriguez as a raunchy barista Anastasia creates a dish out of what could differently be a teenager purpose behaving as a carol of sorts providing some well-needed humor. Both of them seem to be carrying a blast on stage, and their interactions with a rest of a expel are highlights.
‘She Hates Coffee’ has a brief debate entrance up, with stops in Atlanta, Birmingham, and Philadelphia. This will yield copiousness of time for a expel and organisation to continue to file this piece, and when it earnings to this city, I wish to correct my opinion.