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Cooking as the crucible for family and friendship, as well as self-discovery, is familiar territory in theater and film. Whether it’s Jenna in Waitress working out her personal angst through creative pie recipes, or the brothers running a struggling Italian restaurant on the Jersey Shore in the 1996 film Big Night deciding just how much authenticity they’re willing to sacrifice for success, character is often revealed through culinary triumphs and crises. Which makes sense: we all gotta eat, so why wouldn’t the way we cook become a matrix for our shared stories?

The Hot Wing King
Through 7/21: Wed 3 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM; Wed 7/3 7:30 PM only, Sun 7/21 2 PM only, no show Thu 7/4; open captions Thu 7/11, ASL interpretation Fri 7/19; Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org$35-$90

Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing Kingnow in a sweet and spicy local premiere at Writers Theatre under Lili-Anne Brown’s empathetic direction, adds to that canon of stories using cooking as a metaphor for struggle and growth. Set in Memphis, where most of Hall’s plays take place, Hot Wing (which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize after a COVID-truncated 2020 run on Broadway) concerns a group of Black men bent on winning a prestigious local wings competition. The food storyline provides the background for fear, guilt, resentment—and abiding love—to combine and simmer in a show that reveals itself in small and sly ways underneath the rat-a-tat dialogue at the outset.

Cordell (Breon Arzell) is the master wings chef who has assembled his team (the New Wing Order) for another shot at the top title. His lover, Dwayne (Jos N. Banks), manages a Memphis hotel and supports Cordell, who left his wife and two sons in Saint Louis behind for Dwayne. (He hasn’t told them that he’s gay.) Their friends, barber Big Charles (Thee Ricky Harris) and walking (and dancing, and tumbling) one-liner machine Isom (Joseph Anthony Byrd) have joined them to help, though the former would rather watch his beloved Memphis Grizzlies on television, and the latter seems bent on providing play-by-play and steaming hot tea rather than helping with the prosaic kitchen chores. As another character tells him, “Stirring the pot is your specialty.” (Isom’s one major “contribution” to the recipe provides a somewhat predictable but enjoyable twist to the story.)

Dwayne’s seemingly sunny disposition hides its own darkness. His troubled sister died in a chokehold after he called police to do a wellness check on her. Her teenage son, Everett (Jabari Khaliq), is trying to hold it together. Everett’s father, TJ (Kevin Tre’von Patterson), a small-time hustler and thief, wants Dwayne to let his nephew live with him to finish out high school, so he might be able to make it to college on a scholarship.

Cordell isn’t too happy about that idea, though the house (beautifully rendered here in Lauren M. Nichols’s two-level design) is plenty big enough. In part, it’s because he believes that Everett has stolen from them in the past. But as the two-act play unfolds, it seems clear that Cordell also has his own guilt about his sons and being financially dependent on Dwayne. Winning the wings competition is a way of getting his groove back. (Finding his wings, if you will.)

This is lighter fare than the other Hall plays I’ve encountered, including The Mountaintopwhich imagined a meeting between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a maid at the Lorraine Motel the night before the former’s assassination, and Hoodoo Loveset during the Great Depression and Jim Crow. Hall reportedly turned to playwriting from acting because she couldn’t find enough plays with Black women speaking to each other for extended periods of time. Here, she’s giving space and grace and love to a group of Black men, gay and straight, to just simply hang out and work it out together—cooking, playing basketball, and singing Luther Vandross’s “Never Too Much.”

There are dashes of sorrow and guilt amid the comedy, especially for Dwayne and Cordell, who share a perceived failure to be there for family in the past. But as Hall noted in a 2020 interview with Harvard Magazine“With this play, I wanted to embrace the articulation of black life and not necessarily black trauma, so the piece is infused with joy and love and jokes.”

Brown’s production is also infused with stellar performances. Arzell is the right mix of rigidity and doubt as he tries to master his latest recipe (“spicy Cajun Alfredo, with bourbon-infused bacon”) while figuring out how to be honest about his new life with his old family. Banks reveals the stress Dwayne feels being the reliable go-to for everyone else in small but aching moments. Byrd goes to town with the campy comic relief, while Harris provides some choice ripostes for Big Charles from his preferred spot on the sofa.

There is drama here onstage, but not life-altering tragedy. Brown’s ensemble believably embodies men who have known each other for a long time and are accepting of each other’s foibles, even though they can’t resist getting in the occasional dig. The Hot Wing King reminds us that you may not always get what you think you’re looking for in life, but trusting in a beloved community and your own talents may take you further than you ever dreamed possible.