Quirky and neurotic, Gordon B. Shoesmith is a 30-something jazz musician seeing his twelfth psychiatrist in as many years. He increasingly discovers that there is a conflict between his artist's idealism and the hard reality of life.
Fueled by his ambitious journalist girlfriend, Jenny, and her disapproving parents, Gordon finds himself on an improvised, medicated roller-coaster ride of self-discovery that drags him from cockroach-infested, inner-city anonymity to mercurial artistic success, to the cynical world of advertising. He's finally tossed onto the road that leads to a cafe, run by Joe, a middle-aged, Palestinian Elvis impersonator, in the desert town of Venice, South Australia.
A Cafe in Venice is a surreal, comic insight into the personal fulfilment we aspire to a mad, intransigent world.
