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'An Empty Plate' at the Arden (1st review)
Robert Zaller
What's for dinner?
ROBERT ZALLER
Michael Hollinger’s debut play, An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf, now enjoying a revival at the Arden Theatre, is set in 1961, the year of the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall crisis, Jackie Kennedy’s coiffure and Ernest Hemingway’s suicide. All of this— well, most of it— was reason enough for angst (we’ll not dwell on the 1961 Phillies, who lost 23 straight games). And, lest we forget, Existentialism, which hangs heavy over the proceedings, was still the reigning Continental philosophy.
These matters seemed fresher in 1993, when An Empty Plate was written, than they do today. In particular, Ernest Hemingway, whose ghost seems to inhabit the play’s central character, had more cachet. The proper way to kill a bull, though, seems less immediately relevant today in the midst of suicide bombers and melting Arctic ice caps.
The play’s premise remains an intriguing one. “Monsieur,” a.k.a. Victor, wealthy and childless, maintains the restaurant of the title for his own exclusive pleasure, including a world-class chef, a husband-and-wife team of waiter and sommelier, and a stuttering, saxophone-playing busboy whose sole number is Lady of Spain (possibly an arch reference to the Robert Preston/ Julie Andrews sequence in Victor/Victoria). This team remains ever at the ready, with fresh produce brought in daily, for Victor’s erratic and unpredictable visits.
One last phantom meal
Victor’s latest arrival, as he informs his employees, will be his last, for he has decided to commit suicide by starvation. Before he does so, however, he orders a last, phantom meal. The chef, Gaston, will prepare it, but, while it remains unconsumed in the kitchen, waiter Claude will ceremoniously serve Victor a succession of empty plates in its stead. The staff protests, and the rotund Gaston (Ricardo Ruiz) offers a vivid depiction of the progressive effects of starvation on the body. But Victor is adamant. While paying his last respects to life’s banquet, he firmly intends to reject it.
In an Ionesco play, we’d be offered no explanation for this antic behavior. Hollinger, however, wants us to know Victor better, and so he gradually unfolds the tale of a poor little rich boy disappointed by life and love, and suffering (though whether as cause or consequence remains unclear) the delicate maladie that afflicts Jake in The Sun Also Rises. Since Hemingway himself has just committed suicide— this is the news Victor brings to the shocked staff— there would seem little point in his disciple going on.
The lurking gay subtext
The staff, which suffers from its own tensions (and, in Claude’s case, potency problems as well), tries mightily to dissuade Victor, but to no avail. A tender farewell visit by his Lady Brett-like inamorata (Mikaela Kafka) seems to make an appropriate fade, but, upon hearing that she is suffering a fatal illness, Victor recovers his spirits— a gay subtext in the play that lurks throughout. It is too late, however. Acts, as Victor learns, do have consequences, especially when giving servants orders.
An Empty Plate exhibits many of Hollinger’s strengths as a playwright: witty dialogue, taut ensemble writing and the ability to dance on the knife-edge between comedy and drama. He is well served by Whit MacLaughlin’s production, and the especially fine performances of Douglas Rees as Victor and Ian Merrill Peakes as Claude. Peakes, in particular, keeps the level of tension up in what otherwise might seem a protractedly static situation. But the very vigor and intensity of his portrayal— rising at times to a kind of controlled fury— points up the underlying problem of the play.
Why sympathize with Victor?
The staff of the Grand Boeuf exists to serve the whims of an absent master. Its members must always be prepared for a performance at the highest level that rarely takes place; in fact, they resemble nothing so much as the high-strung personalities of Hollinger’s recent play, Opus, about the fortunes of a string quartet. When Victor announces his intention to starve and puts the staff through the pantomime of serving a meal that must actually be cooked, he not only dramatizes his anguished renunciation of life, he also abuses and humiliates faithful servants even as he terminates their employment. Our consciousness of this cruelty— all the worse for Victor’s apparent unawareness of it-— vitiates whatever sympathy we are invited to feel for him. His announcement at the play’s end that the restaurant will be saved and permitted to go public after his death comes too late to make any dramatic difference.
Ionesco, and perhaps even more Genet, would have known how to make crackling black satire out of this upstairs-downstairs scenario. Hollinger wants to have it both ways, leaving Victor a vaguely tragic hero in the midst of his self-indulgence. The comeuppance he gets is absurdist, rather than genuinely subversive as it might have been. An Empty Plate is half a serving of well-crafted theater, but what’s missing is the real meal that might have been served.
To read Steve Cohen's review, click here.
ROBERT ZALLER
Michael Hollinger’s debut play, An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf, now enjoying a revival at the Arden Theatre, is set in 1961, the year of the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall crisis, Jackie Kennedy’s coiffure and Ernest Hemingway’s suicide. All of this— well, most of it— was reason enough for angst (we’ll not dwell on the 1961 Phillies, who lost 23 straight games). And, lest we forget, Existentialism, which hangs heavy over the proceedings, was still the reigning Continental philosophy.
These matters seemed fresher in 1993, when An Empty Plate was written, than they do today. In particular, Ernest Hemingway, whose ghost seems to inhabit the play’s central character, had more cachet. The proper way to kill a bull, though, seems less immediately relevant today in the midst of suicide bombers and melting Arctic ice caps.
The play’s premise remains an intriguing one. “Monsieur,” a.k.a. Victor, wealthy and childless, maintains the restaurant of the title for his own exclusive pleasure, including a world-class chef, a husband-and-wife team of waiter and sommelier, and a stuttering, saxophone-playing busboy whose sole number is Lady of Spain (possibly an arch reference to the Robert Preston/ Julie Andrews sequence in Victor/Victoria). This team remains ever at the ready, with fresh produce brought in daily, for Victor’s erratic and unpredictable visits.
One last phantom meal
Victor’s latest arrival, as he informs his employees, will be his last, for he has decided to commit suicide by starvation. Before he does so, however, he orders a last, phantom meal. The chef, Gaston, will prepare it, but, while it remains unconsumed in the kitchen, waiter Claude will ceremoniously serve Victor a succession of empty plates in its stead. The staff protests, and the rotund Gaston (Ricardo Ruiz) offers a vivid depiction of the progressive effects of starvation on the body. But Victor is adamant. While paying his last respects to life’s banquet, he firmly intends to reject it.
In an Ionesco play, we’d be offered no explanation for this antic behavior. Hollinger, however, wants us to know Victor better, and so he gradually unfolds the tale of a poor little rich boy disappointed by life and love, and suffering (though whether as cause or consequence remains unclear) the delicate maladie that afflicts Jake in The Sun Also Rises. Since Hemingway himself has just committed suicide— this is the news Victor brings to the shocked staff— there would seem little point in his disciple going on.
The lurking gay subtext
The staff, which suffers from its own tensions (and, in Claude’s case, potency problems as well), tries mightily to dissuade Victor, but to no avail. A tender farewell visit by his Lady Brett-like inamorata (Mikaela Kafka) seems to make an appropriate fade, but, upon hearing that she is suffering a fatal illness, Victor recovers his spirits— a gay subtext in the play that lurks throughout. It is too late, however. Acts, as Victor learns, do have consequences, especially when giving servants orders.
An Empty Plate exhibits many of Hollinger’s strengths as a playwright: witty dialogue, taut ensemble writing and the ability to dance on the knife-edge between comedy and drama. He is well served by Whit MacLaughlin’s production, and the especially fine performances of Douglas Rees as Victor and Ian Merrill Peakes as Claude. Peakes, in particular, keeps the level of tension up in what otherwise might seem a protractedly static situation. But the very vigor and intensity of his portrayal— rising at times to a kind of controlled fury— points up the underlying problem of the play.
Why sympathize with Victor?
The staff of the Grand Boeuf exists to serve the whims of an absent master. Its members must always be prepared for a performance at the highest level that rarely takes place; in fact, they resemble nothing so much as the high-strung personalities of Hollinger’s recent play, Opus, about the fortunes of a string quartet. When Victor announces his intention to starve and puts the staff through the pantomime of serving a meal that must actually be cooked, he not only dramatizes his anguished renunciation of life, he also abuses and humiliates faithful servants even as he terminates their employment. Our consciousness of this cruelty— all the worse for Victor’s apparent unawareness of it-— vitiates whatever sympathy we are invited to feel for him. His announcement at the play’s end that the restaurant will be saved and permitted to go public after his death comes too late to make any dramatic difference.
Ionesco, and perhaps even more Genet, would have known how to make crackling black satire out of this upstairs-downstairs scenario. Hollinger wants to have it both ways, leaving Victor a vaguely tragic hero in the midst of his self-indulgence. The comeuppance he gets is absurdist, rather than genuinely subversive as it might have been. An Empty Plate is half a serving of well-crafted theater, but what’s missing is the real meal that might have been served.
To read Steve Cohen's review, click here.
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