At one point in “The Hot Wing King,” a character named Isom, played by Joseph Anthony Byrd, pours a whole shaker’s worth of nuclear-level peppers into his friend’s simmering pot of chicken wings. From there, and after a shaky start, things heat up at Writers Theatre in Glencoe. We’re already a good way into Act 1 before that catalyst, and the first few minutes of this first Chicago-area production of Katori Hall’s 2020 drama struggles to find the right balance between frenetic kitchen action (a group of gay Black men work together on a killer wings recipe that might win a contest) and the kind of verbal and especially physical clarity this kind of ensemble piece needs to introduce characters to an audience, foreground the most important lines and set up the complex themes of the play, which in this case involve Black masculinity, homophobia, parenting and friendship.
Director Lili-Anne Brown’s production is staged on a grand, multi-level set from Lauren M. Nichols that is both a beautiful rendition of an affluent suburban home and a design that doesn’t entirely work for this production: an upper level is not used much, the wing prep is back away from the audience and a home basketball court, where most of the crucial scenes take place, is set off in a corner. You never feel like you are really in the heat of the kitchen or that these likable men are shoved together in the flow of kinetic motion that is communal cooking; too many lines end up landing straight u.
