Empty plates, but full story, in Windfall’s opener

Normally, “dinner and a show” is in that order for reasons of timing and rhythmic fluidity. With Windfall Theatre’s opening production, it’s a recommended order – unless you want your stomach to be growling all the way through.

That’s because their first show of the season is An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf, a play by Michael Hollinger that offers audiences a seven-course meal that exists in words alone – unless your fertile, ravenous imaginations count.   

Director Maureen Kilmurry is the top chef in this theatrical kitchen, leading a cast of six. She says An Empty Plate takes place in 1961, in the titular restaurant, where owner Victor (David Flores) is the only patron its chef and waitstaff ever have to face, excepting his longtime romantic partner (Carol Zippel). But the play’s action begins on an unusual night, when the staff is in disarray and Victor returns from the bullfights in Madrid alone and distraught, ultimately seeking to just wither away at the table.

It’s an unorthodox, slightly absurdist premise, but Kilmurry says the play’s strength is in its dedication to a realistic portrayal of its characters. “This play has a real world feel, which is what makes it interesting,” Kilmurry said. “There’s a touch of absurdism, but most plays are about regular people in unusual circumstances. This is not different.”

Those unusual circumstances are not just limited to Victor’s many struggles, Kilmurry says. “There’s lots of things that are off this evening.” The lead waiter, Claude (Matt Wickey) is in conflict with his wife, waitress Mimi (Lindsey Gagliano), on what is their 7th anniversary. One of the waiters, Pierre, has suddenly died, and his replacement Anton (Mohammad ElBsat) is eager and bright but untrained. And Ernest Hemingway has recently committed suicide, another death of significance that weighs on Victor and colors the production.

The meat of the play comes in the middle, when the chef Gaston (Christopher Elst) and the staff convince Victor to at least let them cook him a meal, even if they leave it in the kitchen. Instead, Kilmurry says, they simply bring out empty plates, trying to tempt him with elaborate, mouth-watering descriptions to change his mind and bring back his appetite. “It’s a battle of wills,” she said. “And the cast really embraced the verbiage.”

It’s a play of substance on multiple levels, one of the reasons Kilmurry agreed to direct when Zippel, Windfall’s artistic director, passed it her way. “You read it and it’s so charming and really thought-provoking,” Kilmurray said. She adds that there’s also an almost musical undercurrent to the structure – the writer, Hollinger, was previously a violist before turning to playwriting (his most popular work, Opus, is about a string quartet), and Kilmurry says that gives the play a rhythm and tempo other works lack.

Whether or not the staff convinces Victor to live, Kilmurry won’t say – although she does reveal the show has a concrete resolution, if not the one you’d expect even two-thirds of the way through. To find out, you’ll have to make a reservation.

Just make sure you eat something first.

Windfall Theatre’s season-opening production of An Empty Plate at the Café du Grand Boeuf opens Friday, Sept. 27 and runs through Oct. 12. Performances are at 8 p.m.; tickets are $20 and can be purchased at (414) 332-3963 or online at Brown Paper Tickets.