When writer-performer Trevor O’Connell faces the solitary reviewer for his one man show at the upstairs room in The Mash House, he seems completely unfazed. He takes out a bound diary, starts flipping through the pages and tells the story of how in 1946 he, the young, Irish sailor Casey, landed in New York. His story serves to explore expat Irishness throughout the past 60 years and this is captured through symbols, music and loving descriptions of landmark buildings – some gone and forgotten now, some gone but forever etched into the collective cultural memory.

O’Connell captures momentous events in small anecdotes. When he plays Dylan on the guitar, meets the tragic poet Dylan, or reenact his escapades with the lovable crook Fitz, he threads before our eyes the complex geography of a city stitched together over centuries by the hard work of immigrants. The sailor’s relationship to New York is epitomised in his infatuation with a woman as complex as the city itself.

Although the performance is still being developed, O’Connell’s coming-of-age story is certainly accomplished and its rich, descriptive language and quirky characters could be straight out of a Don DeLillo novel. Presented by TMT Productions and directed by Genevieve and Anna Hulme-Beaman, this play is a warm and melancholic piece of storytelling – one of those shows that should not ever struggle with empty auditoriums again. Smash the fringe cliché or miss the next Conor McPherson at your own peril.

Originally written Broadway Baby’s Edinburgh Fringe 2014 coverage.

With swashbuckling noblemen standing in for gunslinging thugs, this piece of new writing revolves around two rival brothers: one scheming, the other adventurous. Both were involved in The Big Coffee Heist of 1799. Fifteen years on, the coffee conspiracy catches up with an aristocratic household. Peruvian rascals collide with highly strung dames; emotions and coffee beans fly high in this pleasantly flimsy farce. The show winds its way through time-mashing references, but when confessions of love are fobbed off with “I don’t care if you’re Milton or P Diddy,” it works surprisingly well.

However, Greg Obi’s chatter as the finger-snapping Caecilius Clay becomes fairly strained after 40 minutes, along with the overall show’s heavy reliance on word play and flowery language. The cast, while perhaps too large, is energetic, committed, and throws everything at the stunts, stage fights and, notably, an South American coffee dance orgy. Sadly, most of this happens at the expense of character nuance.

You don’t see the end coming by a heteronormative mile but, considering it’s an original farce, the show suffers somewhat from insufficient laughter. Unleash The Llama’s genre-mixing experiment has Tarantino’s balls (the show is not suitable for minors) but it does not quite share his storytelling finesse.

Written for Broadway Baby as part of the Edinburgh Fringe 2014 coverage.