Emergency at Bewley’s Café Theatre review: War in Europe, as seen from a coffee house

Until March 8

Sam Ford in Emergency

Katy Hayes

February 23 2023 02:57 PM

Sam Ford’s new solo promenade show is brimful of charm. This is utilitarian theatre, killing two birds with one stone: it offers visitors to Dublin a historical tour around Bewley’s Grafton Street premises; and it is also a drama about World War II.

Ford, kitted out in a Bewley’s uniform, plays Austrian head waiter Josef Kellner. It is 1941, war is raging, and he has come to Dublin as a refugee. Josef is searching the premises for his fellow worker and protégée Balasz, a young Hungarian man who was a comrade of Josef’s younger brother Hans, who died fighting the Nazis.