This rambling but impassioned Pulitzer-winner from Kaitori Hall (‘The Mountaintop’, ‘Tina’) follows a group of middle aged gay Black men in Memphis, Tennessee who have said goodbye to the certainties of a conventional life and are now trying to dream it all up again.
Cordell (Kadiff Kirwan) left his wife and two sons five years ago for the sake of his relationship with Dwayne (Simon-Anthony Rhoden), and he is still trying to come to terms with that decision – his kids won’t talk to him, and there are tensions between the two men. The only real certainty in Cordell’s life is his obsession with chicken wing perfection: he is determined to take the coveted title of the Memphis hot wing king, his various creations include blueberry wings, lemon wings (wet and dry), parmesan wings and this year’s masterpiece: the spicy Cajun alfredo with bourbon-infused crumbled bacon.
Roy Alexander Weise’s production of Hall’s play is a peculiar, often enthralling mix of serious naturalism, spiky comedy and flights of hyperreal whimsy.
Most of the lols comes from Jason Barnett and Olisa Odele as Big Charles and Isom, the other couple – or sort-of couple – in the house. Charles, a barber, is schlubby, sports-loving and blokey by the standards of the group. Isom is affably ludicrous, an ultracamp urban dandy who gets the show’s funniest lines (and the night’s biggest gasp thanks to a catastrophic spice mishap). We don’t actually learn a huge amount about their backgrounds, but they feel vital to the play’s texture. What could have been a more conventional drama about Cordell grappling with his various demons is given a pleasantly loopy, agreeable sideways tone by the fact that it is also very much a play about a group of eccentric middle-aged housemates obsessing over elaborate chicken flavours (they call themselves the New Wing Order).
Cordell is the focus, a great character superbly embodied by Kirwan: he’s a tortured soul grappling with his place in the world, but he’s given depth and dimension by his hobby
It’s a play in part about societal expectations of men, and Black men in particular. But it’s also about middle age: nobody here is exactly having a midlife crisis, but Hall’s characters are at an age where they might be expected to feel some certainty about the world and their place in it. Instead they’re all unmoored, drifting.
Ultimately Weise’s production didn’t quite come together for me. A couple of stylised song-and-dance sequences - notably to Luthor Vandross’s ‘Never Too Much’ – plus the occasional use of goofy sitcom-style sound effects felt like it was needlessly overegging the funny bits with no reciprocation for the more serious sections.
At almost three hours it’s also very, very long: seemingly about a half hour longer than its US productions. It suffers for it: both halves are fleet in the moment but lumbering in total, with the men’s stories feeling over-elaborated on by the end. I’m not really clear what accounts for the difference in length with the American productions, but a crisp half-hour trim sounds perfect to me. Like smashing a plate of hot ones, Hall’s play is a pleasure, but there are moments where it feels like an endurance test.
