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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Trouble in Utopia

March 6, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the off-Broadway premiere of Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King and the Broadway transfer of Girl From the North Country. Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

Katori Hall’s plays remind me of a sign I once saw over the front door of an unpretentious little restaurant: “NOT FANCY, BUT GOOD.” Sure enough, there’s nothing fancy about the down-to-earth dramaturgy of Ms. Hall’s kitchen-sink chronicles of family life in all its varied aspects. All she does—if “all” is the word—is tell stories about ordinary men and women who, as Jack Webb said of the characters in “Dragnet,” sound “as real as a guy pouring a cup of coffee.” Yet truth gushes out every time they open their mouths…

After praising “Saturday Night/Sunday Morning” (2008), “Our Lady of Kibeho” (2014) and “The Blood Quilt” (2015), I decided that Ms. Hall, who is 38, was one of the most promising American playwrights of her generation. With the off-Broadway premiere of “The Hot Wing King,”directed with galvanizing vitality by Steve H. Broadnax III, I’m now inclined to go a notch or two further…

Cordell (Toussaint Jeanlouis), the title character, is an amateur chef from Memphis who specializes in elaborately sauced chicken wings—his latest creation is Cajun Alfredo With Bourbon-Infused Crumbled Bacon—and is going for the gold at this year’s Hot Wang Festival. (That’s how they say “wing” down in Memphis.) He is also a straight-acting gay man who left his wife and children in St. Louis and moved to Memphis to live with Dwayne (Korey Jackson), a local hotel manager…

As for Dwayne, he has family problems of his own. TJ (Eric B. Robinson Jr.), his widowed brother-in-law, is a small-time thief who is neglecting Everett (Cecil Blutcher), Dwayne’s 16-year-old nephew. Everett in turn longs to escape the chaos of his own splintered home and live with Dwayne and Cordell. Dwayne is fine with that—but Cordell isn’t. That’s where things get complicated…

“Girl From the North Country,” Conor McPherson’s self-directed jukebox musical based on the songs of Bob Dylan, has reached Broadway after hugely successful runs in London and at New York’s Public Theater, slightly altered but essentially the same as the show I reviewed in 2018, calling it “a musical that does complete justice to the artistry of the great American songwriter whose genius inspired it.”…

*  *  *

To read my review of The Hot Wing King, go here.

To read my review of Girl From the North Country, go here.

Steve H. Broadnax III talks about The Hot Wing King:

Clips from the Broadway transfer of Girl From the North Country:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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