Slow Food

Or: Hunger is the Best Garnish

It starts with the grapevines. They sprout around the entryway to the Boise Contemporary theater, lasciviously crawling over strings of fairy lights and around photographs of stoic looking greek families and depictions of naked men on urns. Director Tracy Sunderland has kneaded the immersive aspect of the theater into a lather, complete with dolmades as other treats from the local Meraki restaurant (present your ticket stub and get a Gyro half off). Inside the theater itself we step around the door of Dimitri’s, a charming, low-key, ubiquitously muraléd establishment. A skilled and attentive musician (Riley Johnson) glides through the room with her delicate accordion or scores attentive behind her keyboard. Brian (Noah Moody) a friendly server may offer you a further delectation. Diners chat softly, or do crossword puzzles, or outline the scripts for their one person plays, happy to spend an hour breathing a refined atmosphere. The only marring experience is Brian’s occasional calls of “Stephen!” through the kitchen doors.

And then Stephen (Jodi Eichelberger) arrives. Bursting through the door with shoulders squared, arms messianicly spread, (and a triumphant chord from Johnson) and defends to the table of Peter (Joe Conley Golden) and Irene (Denise Simone), a married couple spending an anniversary holiday in Santa Barbara. They are tired, waspish, ravenous, and have no idea what their in for. Instead of taking their order and returning with food, Stephen lays out a torture of Tantalus: dangling specials, hinting darkly at the short comings of a dish, darting back to the kitchen, pulling up a chair to discuss Irene and Peter’s married life and children, snidely barbing the couple for their demand to have their food ‘now.’

The feeling of the play balances between a classic MGM comedy (with Eichelberger as the comedic talent that outshines the leads in one scene, now given a whole 80 minutes to strut in) and a hostage crisis. The stakes are so small but sizzle with mouthwatering enticement for being so miniscule. Eichelberger’s exuberance rips right through the idea of “truth in character” and we are happy to leave the shreds to flutter aside, so committed and delightful is his performance. Never changing tack or intention we see him ripple through many shades of Stephen, like colors of the cuttlefish. There is Stephen the snobbish waiter par excellence; Stephen the sociopath, relishing the control over his customers; there is Stephen the sweet fool, conjuring narratives that place him as hero, Stephen the tragic everyman, finding himself twenty years in a dead-end job with nothing to show for it, and Stephen the hero, trying to create for Irene and Peter an evening of true experience, teaching them to savor not just food but life itself, treat each other with greater care, and to appreciate this as the most important meal of their lives.

Which is not to say that Golden and Simone are outshone. Golden’s steady clip of sarcastic rejoinders brings up a steady champagne bubble chain of laughter while his tight brusqueness, regarding both his entitlement and his wife, set out shoulders back in discomfort. Understated and anxious, Peter’s need for commentary and comfort take things from bad to worse but he remains sympathetic and clever and witty throughout. Playwright Wendy MacLeod and Golden both have created a middle-aged man that is no dashed off, ugly caricature but an individual who shows us warts and warmth and all. Simone meanwhile, trying to keep peace between her husband and her server, juggles secret sorrows, hysterical pangs of hunger, a quest for normalcy in a spiraling situation, and a charming professionalism that settles like a queenly mantle when she dons her impressive glasses. She also makes a an excellent spy in one sequence, trying to sneak across a the dining room to pilfer an overlooked breadbasket from another table.

MacLeod’s script is fun without frivolity and hefty without edge. It’s a delightful comedy that leaves one feeling well-satisfied and satiated, but having gone on explorations of life and connection without belaboring its point like so many other dramas. Its jokes are smart, its tension violin taut, and Sunderland plays it beautifully, roping us into the soft light of Dimitri’s to glance on in fascination, like the other character diners and staff, our whole beings attentive to what might come next. It is a scrumptious experience, braised in humor, garnished with sweetness, and offering a soft but elegant kick in the aftertaste. It’s a meal for the eyes ears and heart that definitely warrant a good review and a strong recommendation for your friends to step through its doors.