Review: ‘Babette’s Feast’ Is Served, This Time Onstage

NEW YORK — Preparing food onstage is not new, from the eggs and bacon in David Cromer’s staging of “Our Town” to Hugh Jackman filleting a trout in “The River.” But duplicating the multicourse banquet in “Babette’s Feast” would be impossible — if you think that trout was bad, imagine stuffing the many quails this new show would require.

So Karin Coonrod, who directed this new adaptation, did not represent the meal literally. Those familiar with the Oscar-winning Danish film from 1987 — which builds up to the banquet and essentially ushered in the era of the modern food flick — will be able to conjure up visions of blini with caviar and rum spongecake. Others will be at a disadvantage, because none of these things materialize in the show.

There is a certain elegance to Coonrod’s decision to let audience members flex their imaginations, and the purity of intention matches the story’s setting in an austere Nordic hamlet. Plastic props, in that instance, may well have been distracting. But as it is, the revelatory repast feels undercooked.

Conceived and developed by Abigail Killeen and written by Rose Courtney, this “Babette’s Feast” draws not from the film but from its source, a short story Isak Dinesen published in Ladies’ Home Journal in 1950. We are in the late 19th century, in the isolated Norwegian village of Berlevag. As the daughters of the religious leader, now deceased, the aging sisters Martine ( Killeen) and Philippa (Juliana Francis Kelly) represent Berlevag’s puritanical soul: They are uncommonly sweet and kind but, you know, not a barrel of laughs. (Adding an immersive frisson, the Theater at St. Clement’s, which hosts the production, is part of an Episcopal church.)

One day, Martine and Philippa welcome to their home Babette (Michelle Hurst), a Frenchwoman who lost everything in the brutal repression of the Paris Commune. She becomes their maid and cook, and politely executes their simple Norwegian fare (this was decades before foraging became a thing).

After years of split cod and bread-and-ale soup, Babette finally takes over for a celebratory occasion. Earthly delights await a congregation for which “luxurious fare is sinful,” as Philippa puts it.

Coonrod (“The Merchant of Venice,” “texts&beheadings/ElizabethR”) is a thoughtful director who is not especially interested in realism. In the abstract, this would be an asset for the fablelike “Babette’s Feast.” But the balance of ingredients is often off, especially when it comes to the mix of gravity and dry humor. Hurst relies perhaps a bit too much on the stern demeanor that worked so well for her role of Miss Claudette in “Orange Is the New Black,” and I found myself missing the subtle amusement in the eyes of Stéphane Audran, who portrayed Babette in the film. Some of the scenes also fall flat, as when the ensemble vocalizes sound effects (tshik-tshik-tshik goes the whisk, and so on) while Babette prepares her feast.

While the meal itself does not take all that much stage time, it exposes character and paths not taken. The feast is about destiny and art, and the joy of living in the now rather than sacrificing for the hereafter. The show tries valiantly to suggest all this, but alas, does not quite succeed.

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Event Information:

‘Babette’s Feast’

Through Sept. 2 at the Theater at St. Clement’s, Manhattan; 212-239-6200, stclementsnyc.org.

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.