THE HANGOVER REPORT – Julia Cho’s AUBERGINE at Playwrights Horizons is undercooked

Stephen Park and Tim Kang in Julia Cho's "Aubergine" at Playwrights Horizons

Stephen Park and Tim Kang in Julia Cho’s “Aubergine” at Playwrights Horizons

After the smashing remount of Jaclyn Backhaus’s Men on Boats this summer, I was eager to see what Playwrights Horizons had in store for its audiences in its mainstage season opener. Unfortunately, Julia Cho’s undercooked Aubergine ultimately disappoints. Ms. Cho’s quiet play tells the story of Ray, a Korean American man whose father is dying. Through a series of monologues and scenes, Ms. Cho infuses her work with a number of vignettes about food and cooking – all as it relates to life matters, including the impending death of Ray’s father. Although I found great warmth and humor in the monologues, the scenes with character interactions (many of them performed in Korean with English titles) come off more as inert, even dull (as opposed to sensitive).

In the past, I’ve greatly admired director Kate Whoriskey’s heightened theatrical sensibility. However, here, she has difficulty finding the pulse in Ms. Cho’s play. The same can be said of the valiant effort put forth by the primarily Asian cast. In the central role of Ray, actor Tim Kang has the difficult task of bringing life to a character that’s stubbornly introspective. The rest of the cast – Sue Jean Kim, Jessica Love, Stephen Park, Michael Potts, and Joseph Steven Yang – do the best with the soupy material they’ve been given. Despite a handsome production (scenic design by the prolific Derek McLane) and Ms. Cho’s interesting concept of mining what it means to communicate beyond language through the culinary arts, Aubergine feels stillborn.

SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED

 

AUBERGINE
Off-Broadway, Play
Playwrights Horizons
2 hours, 15 minutes (with one intermission)
Through October 2

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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