Project plays with no audio, all meters blank, even cpu

I’m trying to open a project made by a frequent collaborator who I’ve done a lot of work with in the past.

This project was made in Cubase 9.0.0 and has many plugins, however I also have all of those same plugins on my system.

I’m on OSX 10.11.3
Trying in
9.0.30 (64 bit)
9.5.10 Build 79 (64 bit)

Both versions of Cubase give the exact same result. I open the project, it loads fine. I press play. All meters are blank, both audio and cpu/disk. No sound plays. As the track “plays”, automation moves faders as expected. Disabling plugins doesn’t change anything. Tracks that have audio only with no plugins are also impacted by this same issue.

This isn’t a driver issue, I can load any other project and audio plays and meters respond as normal.

Any suggestions on a solution would be greatly appreciated. We are under a tight deadline on this project.