Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Milk on the Side: a Barista Musical
Short and Sweet Theatre
Genre: Comedy, Interactive, Musical Theatre
Venue: The Speakeasy at The Royal Scots Club (V241)
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Amy and Casey are artistes serving coffee with every conceivable kind of alternative milk and smashing avocados to spread on lukewarm toast for the café cognescenti in a fashionable part of Edinburgh. It’s just a stop gap job though while they look for something better. Trouble is, Amy’s been in this stop gap for six years, Casey longer than that, both drifters in a dream.
Review
Amy and Casey are artistes. OK, OK, they’re really baristas working together in the coffee-ground trenches of one of those wonderfully hipster cafés you see dotted around in Edinburgh, crawling with customers with smartphone to one ear, calling out orders for incomprehensibly complex coffees. But serving coffee with every conceivable kind of alternative milk and smashing avocados to spread on lukewarm toast is performance art, OK?
And this is just a stop gap whilst they wait for that dream job to land in their respective laps. You know, one that pays more than the minimum wage, one with real career prospects, not the promise of just a slightly less dull office job, for example. Trouble is, Amy’s been in this stop gap for six years, Casey longer than that, both drifters in a dream.
That’s the premise for this gently amusing, cleverly scripted and staged exploration of life in the career slow lane that is the hospitality industry, with its attendant struggles and absurdities.
People watching in these sorts of places is always fascinating, so we can all relate to those crazy customers who unknowingly provide us with slices of life in all its glory. So, it’s appropriate that the audience down in the depths of the Royal Scots Club play that role as Amy (writer/actor Clare Roberts) and Casey (actor Emily Mahiai) scurry around taking orders, preparing drinks, creating food and dealing with the multitude of day to day dull tasks that, well, just need doing.
Mixing some exquisitely scripted banter and badinage exploring their respective life dreams and plans, with a series of nicely delivered comedic songs, this is a pleasant hour that entertains whilst raising, gently and in circumlocutory fashion, a number of issues pertinent to those trying to create a life out of what can be depressingly little. How they’d need to work for half a day to be able to afford one of the more complicated coffees they serve up. Longer if they actually wanted something to eat with it.
Clever, throw away asides take a gentle dig at the all pervading culture of zero hours contracts in jobs to nowhere on just the minimum wage for which a ridiculous level of qualifications are required to get even an interview, never mind land employment that will utilise precious little of the employee’s latent talents.
The songs trip along nicely too, “Smooth and Sweet” capturing the way the baristas like their lives, “Meeting Harry Styles” the moment Casey’s face blindness lost her the opportunity to escape this drudgery and “Sick on a Train” just one of the many events that foiled Amy’s plans to diverse. This last song was a real standout, somehow making travel sickness a laugh out loud moment.
This is a very good show, gentle in its delivery, subtle in its messaging, written and performed by two talented individuals who have real experience (and expertise) in the coffee grinding sector. And, whilst both characters (and, I’d venture to suggest, actors) dream of escaping its clutches, perhaps sometimes it’s better to stick with the cards in your hand rather than twist and risk being miserable in some place else. If only this paid a bit more though…….
