Off-Broadway Play Review—Abe Koogler’s “Staff Meal”

Staff Meal

Written by Abe Koogler

Directed by Morgan Green

Through May 24, 2024

Playwrights Horizons

416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY

playwrightshorizons.org

Susannah Flood and Greg Keller in Staff Meal (photo: Chelcie Parry)

Abe Koogler’s play Staff Meal teases at being many things—surreal adventure, nightmarish parody, quirky rom-com—but ends up being not much of anything, a tasting menu with too many options and not enough flavor. The flimsy, one-act conceit begins with several blackout scenes of a couple, Ben and Mina, meeting cute in a coffee shop while working on their laptops. After some amusing introductory dialogue, Ben finally asks Mina out to dinner; as they walk the streets, they make small talk about where they’re from and discover a posh restaurant that is inexplicably empty. 

After they’re seated, the couple is never served dinner—shades of Luis Bunuel’s own surreal satire, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie—because the wine they order is in a cellar deep underground. While waiting, Ben discusses his idiosyncratic take on the film Titanic while Mina describes her bizarre belief that she is inextricably linked to fictional characters like the rat in Ratatouille or the whale in Moby-Dick.  

Meanwhile, the waiter who traveled great lengths to fetch their bottle explains in a long speech why the wine cellar is so far away, who the restaurant owner is and why it was difficult to find the exact wine they ordered. Two other servers appear, as does the executive chef: they have their own tales to tell, as does a vagrant who sneaks onstage from the wings a couple times and who turns out to be the restaurant’s owner. (That the vagrant, owner and chef are played by the same actor is another of Koogler’s fuzzy conceits.)

After the play meanders on for awhile, an older woman stands up in the audience and complains about how silly, trite and cliched it has been so far—that she’s not wrong is part of Koogler’s self-puncturing joke, but he also lets her go on too long telling her own story that’s silly, trite and cliched, undercutting his initially amusing and salient point. 

And so it goes for 90 minutes. Ben, Mina and the other characters (include a second vagrant, if you please) are always frustrated in their attempts to make some sort of connection—even more shades of Bunuel’s film—but Koogler’s undercooked play has the feel of an elaborately planned gourmet meal where the diners are instead served microwaved fast-food leftovers. 

What’s supposed to be absurdist is merely absurd; a conversation between Ben and Mina about a beloved pet he had as a kid growing up in Spain is literally a shaggy-dog story. Director Morgan Green does a credible job of maneuvering through the weeds to find some kind of pathway: Masha Tsimring’s expressive lighting, Jian Jung’s subtly witty sets, Kaye Voyce’s clever costumes and Tei Blow’s foreboding sound design create the essence of an unnerving journey that the play doesn’t supply. 

In a game cast, Susannah Flood (Mina) and Greg Keller (Ben) are able to best transcend the script to create a real spark of interest. They are so engaging together that it would be nice to see the pair in a real rom-com—as long as they don’t stop in a place like this for a bite.