The Hot Wing King

Katori Hall
National Theatre
National Theatre, Dorfman Theatre

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Dwane Walcott as TJ and Kaireece Denton as EJ Credit: Helen-Murray
Simon-Anthony Rhoden as Dwayne, Kadiff Kirwan as Cordell and Olisa Odele as Ison Credit: Helen-Murray
The Hot Wing King cast Credit: Helen-Murray

Katori Hall’s warm-hearted situation comedy touches on the difficulties of family relationships among a group of black males, three of whom are preparing for the big day at the Memphis Hot Wing contest.

Cordell is determined to win, telling Big Charles (Jason Barnett) and Isom (Olisa Odele) to turn off the game they’d rather watch on TV and help with the preparation.

That’s not the only thing on his mind. His gay partner of five years, Dwayne (Simon-Anthony Rhoden), wants his brother’s troubled sixteen-year-old son Everett (Kaireece Denton) to stay at the house away from the risky drug trade of his dad TJ and the memories of having witnessed police kill his mentally ill mother.

Cordell left his wife and sons for Dwayne but feels it has become very unbalanced with Dwayne dressed in good suits and fancy clothes paying for the house, wanting to invest money in Cordell’s possible business and basically looking after him—not that Cordell, given a fine nuanced performance by Kadiff Kirwan, seems to need looking after.

Most of the nearly three-hour performance time is fast, playful banter with the serious elements mostly emerging just before the interval. To avoid that detour into the troubled lives of some of the characters changing the mood, one of the men drops something extremely spicy into the food, which we know will later conjure up some hilarious scenes.

Not that the writer needed to overdo the liberal cosiness of the show. Everything turns out happily in the end with lots of hugs and one character saying to another, “all black boys deserve love, even those trapped in the body of a man.”

Reviewer: Keith Mckenna

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