AN ill-written farce that declines into sentimentality is a grim spectacle.Case in point: Michael Hollinger’s “An Empty Plate in the Cafe du Grand Boeuf.”
The staff is setting up in a restaurant in Paris. The waiter, his wife, the waitress, the busboy and the cook are readying the place for the arrival of the American owner and sole patron.
He arrives from Madrid, although the waiter thinks he comes from Milan and greets him in Italian and the cook thinks he’s from Munich and tries German.
This is typical humor dispensed by the lame script.
Fortunately, when the owner does come, he turns out to be pudgy, genial, sympathetic, neatly dressed George Wendt (best known from “Cheers” on TV and “Art” on Broadway).
Wendt projects a certain likability, a hearty sympathy. We are willing to go along with him — up to a point.
Incidentally, he addresses everyone in English and is addressed by them in English; no reference is made this odd linguistic situation, but what the hell — it’s a comedy, right?
Wendt declares he wants no food; he’ll settle for empty plates plopped down in front of him and described as containing culinary masterworks. He wants to starve himself to death, so long as he gets to tell his story.
As the waiter (Jonathan Freeman in an excessive performance) presents him an entirely imaginary course of truffles, he tells of how his mother brought him a copy of Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” Indeed, this play seems a witless and grotesque parody of “The Sun Also Rises.”
The stuttering busboy (a neat job by Matt Stinton) writes it all down in his notebook because he’s studying journalism in college — in Paris in 1961! Did I mention that it’s 1961?
That’s important, because Wendt knows Hemingway has just committed suicide, and because Jackie Kennedy has recently visited Paris and made quite an impression on the waitress (Annie Golden).
Soon, various troubles among the help break out: the cook, after serving Wendt a gun in the sauce tray, confesses his love for the waitress; the waiter, her husband, admits he’s attracted to the busboy; the waitress, dressed in imitation of Jackie, is about to storm off.
It would take a blazingly brilliant script to make this tortured and not particularly dramatic nonsense come to life. We don’t get it.
We just sit through much inept and implausible folderol — relived by some droll playing — as far from brilliance as Hollinger is from Hemingway.
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AN EMPTY PLATE IN THE CAFE DU GRAND BOEUF
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