The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A chef and a dishwasher face colliding tragedies
Contrived plot, mix of drama, comedy don’t come together.
In Will Snider’s “How to Use a Knife,” a hotshot chef who has taken a plunge in the world accepts a job in a frenetic Wall Street burger joint manned by immigrant cooks.
As the beef sizzles and the french fries crisp, George struts into a kitchen full of wise-cracking, Spanishspeaking dudes he assumes are Mexican. (They aren’t.)
Over in one corner, Steve, an African dishwasher everyone thinks is Muslim, works silently, as if speaking would incriminate him in an undesirable alien world that is dangerously tainted. (Which it might.)
Over the course of this Horizon Theatre production, the chef (Brian Kurlander) and the dishwasher (LaParee Young) will create an unlikely alliance that goes from a simmer to a boil. (The one-act play runs almost two hours.)
These disparate, desperate heroes have made poor choices in the past. But after all the preening egotism, selfimposed isolation, pressurecooker stress and racial tension, there’s hope of happier journeys to come.
There’s little doubt that the restaurant kitchens of urban America are some of the most diverse and authentic melting pots in the culture, places where languages and manners collide in an intimate swirl of sweat, muscle and grease. That’s the observation of Snider, a young playwright who has lived and worked in East Africa and bused tables at many New York restaurants.
As directed by Carolyn Cook and designed by Moriah and Isabel Curley-Clay, “How to Use a Knife” takes place in a hyper-realistic world of stainless-steel countertops, stoves, fry baskets and supply cabinets. Order and cleanliness are essential to the business of putting food on a plate, though the process is rife with mess and rot.
Here, too, it is a dance of noise and nerves that begins with a cacophony and ends, if you will, with a whimper. The energy of the opening moments was so intense the night I caught the show that it stopped making sense, to me at least, and the comedy was forced and hard to discern.
As Michael, the restaurant owner who once worked for George, Brad Brinkley represents all the phony-baloney posturing that goes with the world of culinary celebrity today. Michael’s so full of himself that he even makes a pass at the no-nonsense immigration investigator, Kim (nicely played by Cynthia D. Barker).
As Jack, the hustling server George bullies and mentors, Jeremiah Parker Hobbs calibrates his performance at the same overwrought pace as his character’s bosses. How come everybody’s so hyped up? All beef, no tenderness.
While Tony Guerrero and Orlando Carbajal Rebollar are likable as the Spanishspeaking line cooks, their stories aren’t really developed by the playwright, and the characters come across as filler.
Young, on the other hand, is terrific as Steve, who has had a brutal past in Rwanda, a history he eventually confides to George. (The chef is a recovering drug addict with his own personal pantry of issues and a defining horror that mirrors Steve’s, albeit on a much smaller scale.)
Alas, I found the odd couple setup overly sentimental and rather contrived: Theirs are a pair of past-tense tales meant to pump up a play that is devoid of plot and emotional heft.
Sure, there are obvious parallels between the politics of our time and this story. Immigrants who work in the restaurant industry have to watch their backs more than ever. But if you are trying to win sympathy for victims of injustice, you might do better than a character who confesses that he’s a war criminal.
That Snider can make us feel for both his butchers, however, is kind of remarkable.
In the end, however, I felt more exhausted than engaged by this turgid drama of restaurant-kitchen chaos with a double-helping of offstage tragedy. Somehow it manages to be both raw and overcooked all at once, not nearly as juicy as it would have us believe.