Review of the play 'Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play' at San Francisco Playhouse. The play explores the history and societal impact of monosodium glutamate (MSG) through a story about a young woman named Ami and her family.
There’s a powerful ingredient in many dishes that is racism; it’s known to chefs everywhere as monosodium glutamate. The racist part is when we apply its initials — MSG . To be clear, we’re not talking about MSG in hot dogs, mustard, ketchup, pepperoni or Cool Ranch Doritos. Those are fixtures in the snackdom of Americana and cause only joy through its powdery magic. But chow mein is Chinese food, and judged on a different scale.
MSG in this delicacy, also exquisite, apparently causes endless nausea and crippling headaches. In the brilliant “Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play” at San Francisco Playhouse, Ami is required to subscribe to this chop logic, and it’s personal for her. After all, her grandfather crafted the substance in a lab in 1968, making taste buds soar with joy. But somewhere in the United States, and this is true, a heavy night of drinking and Chinese cuisine consumption by a couple of mouth breathers became a sketchy wager. Could one really get an article about “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” into a prestigious medical journal despite no scientific backing? Apparently yes, which changed the perception of MSG from delicious to destructive. Welcome to the latest, racist trope.Keiko Green’s script offers wildly divergent storytelling pathways that are executed fiercely by director Jesca Prudencio and a universally brilliant cast. There are pop culture touchstones galore, including Bill and Ted, the relationship between Goop goddess Gwyneth Paltrow and her beau Ben Affleck (but not actually them, seriously), and the joy of “Street Fighter” and “Dragon Ball Z” (the soundscape created by designer James Ard to enhance many of these dynamics is of the next level variety, a cacophony of speaker and subwoofer scintillation). In 1999, the final year of the millennium, and the year before Y2K was supposed to wipe out civilization, Ami (Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer) isn’t much different from many teenagers. She stresses about things that are age-appropriate, grappling with her brother and his genius, digging on a dude loaded with charming vapidity, and dealing with her mother (Nicole Tung), who loves to kick butt in the most literal sense possible. But through her teen angst, another layer of self-loathing emerges. Has her family lineage destroyed stomachs for all time? Like any great hero, finding out the truth is more important than landing a more low-key lunch of chicken fingers as opposed to the specifically-scented bento boxes her mother makes for her. A school report means a literal deep dive into her family history, with time travel the vehicle to discovering her family’s MSG history. The brilliance of Green’s script, despite moments of disconnected convolution, is that it isn’t easy and requires work to parse the soul-crushing truth beneath the painful laughter. Yes, the story is straightforward, but the answers are not.People of color are constantly reminded that their contributions to society are valued differently, if at all. The fact that a person is allowed to write a falsehood and take down an entire community with nary a hint of interrogation is damaging. False stereotypes Asian people are forced to bear, year after year, carry a specific and timely through-line in “Exotic Deadly.” The terrific cast includes most taking on multiple roles (Kathleen Qiu’s costume design shreds), despite the demands of physical comedy. Phil Wong holds court as a master of preening all over the stage, dialing in his dynamic variance in each iteration of his wild characterizations. Edric Young and James Aaron Oh are every bit Wong’s equals when diving into their own range. Tung slides from MSG-infused goofball to tender with a slippery ease, and Bostwick-Singer, as the piece’s conscience, is adept at playing young and playful with a connection to the audience that feels universal inside such meta theatricality. The character most interesting to the story is Exotic Deadly, taken on by Francesca Fernandez. Just notice the way Exotic bursts through the doors with unapologetic ferocity, only to be ripped down by society as she quietly moves back to her perceived place in the world. She lives in a duality, initially shattering the model minority myth while being forced to retreat all the while as time marches forward. The play says much about food, and how damaging perceptions are when the default of white bread sandwiches, chips and juice boxes are replaced by a certain kind of identity-specific delicacy. Often, those morsels are chopped in the kitchen between multiple generations of family members, ensuring that a meal isn’t just delicious, but also historic, and definitely beautiful.
MSG Racism Stereotypes Food Family History San Francisco Playhouse Theater Review
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