Plates Empty, Stage Full in Port Townsend’s Café du Grand Boeuf

A tragicomedy spins a feast from thin air at Saltfire Theatre’s An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf. It runs through 11/24 in Port Townsend. 

I should really know better by now: never go into a show centered on food on an empty stomach. The cast of Saltfire Theatre’s intimate production of Michael Hollinger’s tragicomic An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf had my tummy rumbling with their loving, lavish descriptions of mouthwatering French dishes, painstakingly prepared for the finest of palates. But at the heart of the piece is the question — will the sensuous descriptions of the café’s gourmet fare, as enticing as they are, be enough to save a life?

It’s a hot July night in 1961, and the employees of the Café du Grand Boeuf — exacting head waiter Claude (Scott Bahlmann), his wife, waitress Mimi (Laura Cornell), chef Gaston (Doug Gaskey), and bumbling new waiter Antoine (Kait Tapia) — are all aflutter at the news that their patron (and only customer), the mysterious “Monsieur” (Erik Van Beuzekom), is returning from abroad and will be joining them for dinner. But upon his arrival, the usually gregarious Monsieur makes a startling pronouncement: he plans to starve himself to death. 

Distraught, the café employees do everything they can to talk Monsieur, who now insists on being called by his real name, Victor, out of this plan, to no avail. Finally, Claude decides to make a bet with Victor: the staff will prepare their finest seven course meal but will only describe the dishes to Victor. If they haven’t managed to stir his appetite by meal’s end, they’ll leave him to die. As each course passes and every beautiful dish is described and subsequently spurned, Victor spins out the story of his life as a newspaper man, ex-patriate, and Ernest Hemingway devotee, and of his failed romance with the lovely “Mademoiselle,” Louise (played by co-director Maude Eisele), which seems to have precipitated his wish to die.

What becomes of Victor by the time “dessert” is served? That would be telling, but the meal may well end up changing the course of several lives. 

Despite occasionally looking like they might fall off the postage stamp-sized stage in the backroom of Vintage by Port Townsend Vineyards, the cast is clearly having a good time with the piece, especially as the more farcical elements of the action ramp up. Van Beuzekom manages to mine not only Victor’s humor, but his pathos as well, and brings a gravitas and a magnetism to the character that grounds the action even as it spirals into absurdity. He and Cornell in particular have a few lovely interactions. Bahlmann, haughtily towering over the rest of the cast, has some nice moments as he attempts to seduce Victor into culinary submission, and makes subtle nods towards the real reasons for his and Mimi’s marital troubles. Gaskey shows some comedic chops as the frustrated kitchen artiste, denied his audience by Victor’s suicidal plan, particularly in describing the painful physical outcomes of starvation. Tapia — who, if nothing else, deserves kudos for successfully playing “Lady of Spain” on a melodica multiple times during the play — overcomes the hurdle of her character’s stutter to bring a sweet sincerity and humor to her character. And Eisele makes the most of her character’s deus ex machina appearance near the play’s end; she and Van Beuzekom share real chemistry and manage to offer a compelling window into Victor and Louise’s relationship in just a few moments on stage together. 

Co-directors Eisele and Genevieve Barlow probably had a number of practical considerations that went into picking this piece — a small cast, and one fairly straightforward setting is always a boon to a small, newer company, especially given the size of the venue. But there are also threads to the story — alienation, a hunger of the soul, hope in the face of despair — that speak to the modern moment, even if an exploration of rich, white American masculinity just now prompted a bit of an (internal) sigh. (And, sorry not sorry: you will pry my disdain for Ernest Hemingway’s overwrought prose out of my cold, dead, English major hands.)

And really — at the end of the day, is there a better metaphor for what theatre does than making a sumptuous meal for the senses out of nothing more than thin air and words, words, words? 

An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf from Saltfire Theatre runs through 11/24 at Vintage by Port Townsend Vineyards, in Port Townsend. Tickets are $28, here. (Note: very limited number of pay-what-you-choose tickets available at the door for each performance.) Venue notes: intimate setting in a wine bar; restrooms are gendered and wheelchair accessible.

Run time: 90 minutes, no intermission. 

Jill Farrington Sweeney is a Texas ex-pat getting to know the Seattle-area arts scene, and is perpetually on the hunt for good Mexican food. Her writing has appeared on TheaterJones, Onstage NTX, and NWTheatre.