The Hot Wing King @ Dorfman Theatre...

Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see the Pulitzer Prize winning comedy The Hot Wing King at the Dorfman Theatre on London's glitzy South Bank.

 

Writer Katori Hall's entertaining and humane 2020 story sees four queer black men prepping for a hot wing competition in Memphis, Tennessee.

 

Beneath the bantering dialogue, and the precise instructions on how to prepare Spicy Cajun Alfredo wings with bourbon-infused crumbled bacon, lie questions of how to be a black man in America, and how to form a relationship and a family.

 

Amateur chef Cordell (Kadiff Kirwan) left his wife and kids for hotel manager Dwayne (Simon-Anthony Rhoden) after meeting him in the barbershop of lugubrious Big Charles (Jason Barnett). Schlubby Big Charles and his fey, preening partner Isom (Olisa Odele) alternately argue with and ignore each other. Dwayne is stricken with guilt over the killing by police of his disturbed sister, which left his nephew Everett (Kaireece Denton) alone with his criminal father TJ (Dwane Walcott).

 

Though it sounds like a lot is going on here, the story is actually extremely straightforward, unfolding around the island kitchen of Dwayne’s upmarket home over the course of roughly 24 hours.

 

Cordell is getting his chicken ready and asking all the others to pitch in with various levels of success.

 

The show even has its own version of Chekhov’s gun: the jar of superhot Ugandan Pelepele pepper mentioned early on is inevitably deployed later, with scorching results. Snatches of music swell up at moments of high emotion, there’s a hilarious group rendition of Luther Vandross’s Never Too Much

 

What elevates it is the quality and wit of Hall’s writing and the passionate engagement of the cast with her themes. She touches on food, class, sports, education and sexuality, what it means to be a lover and a father.

 

All six characters present very different versions of black masculinity to the world and even the homophobic, drug-dealing TJ (terrified his son will turn 'soft') is imbued with depth and subtlety.

 

Go see.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️