By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Somers

Hart

Kelly

Remember that old commercial pitch-line, "This is not your father's Oldsmobile!"?

Well, Triple Espresso now at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati is your father's Oldsmobile - a sturdy and reliable entertainment vehicle built for middle-aged, white suburbanites. If they can be convinced to park their SUVs - and themselves - at 12th and Vine, the the folks at Ensemble could run the show for a good long time.

Triple's concept is that Hugh Butternut (Paul Somers) is celebrating his 25th anniversary of entertaining at a coffeehouse, although the show is really a send-up of cheesy Vegas piano bar entertainment.

He's invited his former partners Bobby Bean (Get it? Get it?) and Buzz Maxwell (Wink! Wink!) back for the occasion, and because the show's present-day is 2000, their trip back to their beginnings lands straight in the mid-'70s.

Triple relies heavily on audience interplay for its action, and earns a lot of sympathetic laughter for the draftees from their relieved brethren safe in their seats.

It's the kind of entertainment that goes down most easily when you're lubricated with something stronger than a jolt of java, even if you like Barry Manilow.

If '70s' sounds leave you indifferent to cold, if elevator music makes you claustrophobic, if making the audience get your yuks for you strikes you as a lazy way to perform, if a sing-along to "Muskrat Love" is your idea of hell - as it is mine - welcome to purgatory.

There are respites. Christopher Hart (morose Buzz) does swell close-up magic as a hyperventilating prestidigitator, and Brian Kelly (obtuse, word-mangling Bobby) does an impressive gorilla. When he sends his fingers and hands working in the spotlight for a brief shadow puppet play ("The Fox and the Hound"), it's a shriek.

The second act agreeably trips from Zaire (don't ask) where the guys perform yet another '70s medley to an African beat (this one is actually fun), to Hugh's breakdown (and who could blame him?) to the old, old, old Mike Douglas Show. (If you know who I'm talking about, don't forget to renew your AARP membership.)

Everybody performs well individually (although Somers pales in comparison to Will & Grace's Jack. They could be cousins separated at birth.)

There's nothing remotely suggesting a connection between these guys who, according to the script, supposedly have a long and strange history together. The show is as canned as Campbell's.

Triple Espresso, through May 11, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 421-3555.