'The Hot Wing King'

All right, tell the truth. 

Aren’t hot wings and Buffalo wings the same things?  I mean, really—they’re both made from the usually-discarded part of the bird, the part that mostly ends up in the soup pot; they’re both cooked up crisp and then covered in a spicy sauce; most people like to dip them in another sauce like blue cheese or ranch; and almost everyone who eats them, eats them in a bar or in the living room with a big game like the Super Bowl on TV.

In fact there are so many recipes for both chicken wing snacks—scores, maybe even hundreds—that it’s probably impossible to distinguish hot wings from Buffalo wings.  As far as I can determine, the main difference—if it’s even accurate—is that the basis of the hot sauce for Buffalo wings is cayenne pepper and for hot wings it’s chili peppers.

The only real difference is that Buffalo wings were invented in Buffalo, New York, and hot wings come from down south; Memphis, Tennessee, is the hot-wing capital of the country, in terms of the number of raw wings sold and cooked ones consumed, though whether they were first concocted there is arguable.

Almost inarguable is that Buffalo wings, the ones people dip in the blue cheese sauce, were introduced in 1964 in a bar.  Hot wings, the ones dipped in ranch dressing (though not always), showed up in Memphis around 1990, sold from a food truck (and 1992 in a restaurant).  An annual hot-wing festival in April began in Memphis in 2002; a Buffalo wing festival started in 2001.

But if you press the point of which town really served the first spicy chicken wings—you might well find yourself in a . . . well, heated argument, let’s say.  (If you want to argue whose wings are better . . . well, that’s probably not a real good idea.)

According to the hot-wing chef in Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King, though, his family recipe for the dish dates back to 1808.  Oh, and he comes from Saint Louis—though I don’t know that he wasn’t born in Memphis, where the play is set.

According to the website This Week in New York, Hall was moved to write The Hot Wing King, her third and last production of her Residency 5 at the Signature Theatre Company, in part because of that annual festival, the Southern Hot Wing Festival, in Memphis, her hometown (about which she writes frequently).  The festival includes a hot-wing cooking competition which is central to the play and initiates the events that unfold.

Hall, 38, a playwright, writer, actress, and social and political activist, was born in Memphis.  According to an interview in Art Works Blog, a website of the National Endowment for the Arts, Hall’s parents told stories around the dinner table, recounting their day at work and playing all the characters, and she credits this practice for her attraction to theater.  “It was like watching one-person shows at the kitchen table.”  As a girl, she staged plays in her family’s living room.

In 1999, she graduated from Craigmont High School in Memphis as the first African-American valedictorian.  After high school, Hall attended New York City’s Columbia University, graduating in 2003 with a major in African-American Studies and Creative Writing.  She was awarded top departmental honors from the university’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS). 

In 2005, she graduated from the American Repertory Theater’s Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University with a Master of Fine Arts in Acting, and then spent two years as an actress in New York, working on stage and in TV.  She then entered the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace playwriting program, graduating in 2009.

Hall’s been a book reviewer, journalist (another form of storytelling), and essayist for publications such as the Boston Globe, Essence, Newsweek and the New York Times.  She’s also been a Kennedy Center Playwriting Fellow at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center of Waterford, Connecticut.

She’s probably best known as the author of The Mountaintop, her play about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last night before his assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on 4 April 1968, which premièred in London in 2009 to great critical acclaim.  The Mountaintop opened on Broadway on 13 October 2011, starring Samuel L. Jackson (in his Broadway début) as King and Angela Bassett as a mysterious maid.  Directed by Kenny Leon, it ran 117 regular performances and 24 previews, closing on 22 January 2012.

Hall is also the book-writer, with Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins, of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, the current juke-boxer that opened in November at Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.  Other work includes Hurt Village (2012; currently in development as a feature film to be Hall’s film-directing début) and Our Lady of Kibeho (2014), Hall’s previous Residency 5 offerings at STC, and Children of Killers (2011). (Signature’s Residency 5 guarantees each playwright three productions of new plays over the course of a five-year residency.)

Hall has very strong socio-political views; race and ethnicity are often elemental to her dramaturgy.  The dramatist tries to represent the African-America community in her plays and promotes or celebrates social change. 

When, while taking an acting class at Columbia, Hall’s  teacher told the class to find plays with characters who looked like them, Hall and her scene partner, another young Southern black woman, searched the university library to no avail.  There were no plays with two black women in the cast, so Hall thought: “I have to write those plays, then.  I have to carry that baton forward and write us into existence because if I don’t who else will?"

In 2017, she was named artistic director of the Hattiloo Theater, an African-American repertory theater in Memphis dedicated to “the diversity of black expression.”  Hall said “she hopes to help bring about ‘a renaissance, a revitalization of the arts in Memphis.’”   Hall’s dedication to her city and her heritage is expressed in a comment she made at the time: “Everything that Memphis is, is represented  in my art.”

Hall’s awards include a Laurence Olivier Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship, two Lecompte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Fellowship, and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award.  Hall was shortlisted for the London Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award and received the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award from the William Inge Theatre Festival.  She is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Ron Brown Scholar Program, and the Coca-Cola Scholar Program. 

The world première of The Hot Wing King began performances at the Pershing Square Signature Center’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, the company’s 191-seat proscenium house, on 11 February 2020; the production, directed by Hall’s collaborator, Steven H. Broadnax, III, opened on 1 March.  I caught the 7:30 p.m. performance on Friday, 6 March.  After one extension for the originally announced final performance on 15 March, Hot Wing King was scheduled to close on 22 March, but the coronavirus pandemic caused Signature to cease all performances after 11 March.

In the Memphis house owned by Dwayne (Korey Jackson), a successful hotel manager, Cordell (Toussaint Jeanlouis) is preparing the ingredients for the town’s annual hot-wing contest.  He’s sure he has a good chance of winning the $5,000 prize this year with a new recipe, “Cajun Alfredo with Bourbon-Infused Crumbled Bacon”—especially with the help of his friends Dwayne, Isom (Sheldon Best), and Big Charles (Nicco Annan).  The four African-American men are all gay and Cordell is Dwayne’s housemate and lover.

Two months ago, the forty-ish Cordell left his wife, two sons, and job as a FedEx executive in St.  Louis to move in with Dwayne.  His wife won’t sign the divorce papers and Cordell hasn’t been able to find a job in Memphis and he feels a little like a kept man in Dwayne’s house—not that Dwayne, an eminently reasonable and thoughtful man, has said or done anything to give this impression

Cordell’s team, the New Wing Order, who gather for this occasion every year—Cordell has entered before, but never won—consists of his and Dwayne’s closest friends who treat the occasion as a special event for the four of them.  Isom, in his thirties and the youngest of the group, is an outright flamer, femmy, outrageous, and funny; when Dwayne gives the men special team shirts for the contest, Isom adds glitter to his and cuts the bottom off to reveal his midriff.  (The costumes are the work of Emilio Sosa, who seems to have had the most fun with Isom’s garb.)  During the first scene, sports-loving Big Charles keeps running back to the TV in the living room to check on a game in progress while Cordell is organizing the prep in the kitchen. 

The whole process is almost-organized chaos, and supplies the comedy for Hall’s bifurcated play: half sit-com and half family drama.  The cracks in Dwayne and Cordell’s relationship are a hint of the drama to come, and it gets a boost from the arrival of Dwayne’s former brother-in-law, TJ (Eric B. Robinson, Jr.).  TJ’s a drug-dealer and small-time crook.  He was married to Dwayne’s sister, an emotionally disturbed woman who died while under police restraint and Dwayne feels guilty because he had called the cops when she was having an episode.

TJ’s come by to leave a package of money for his son, sixteen-year-old Everett, known as “EJ” (Cecil Blutcher), who shows up himself asking to stay with his uncle.  Dwayne’s guilt over the death of EJ’s mother, which the boy witnessed, compels him to look on the boy as his responsibility; he wants his nephew to live with him and Cordell—though Cordell has misgivings about the prospect.  EJ’s also a high school basketball star and Cordell, a former Georgetown Hoya b-ball player, tries to bond with his lover’s nephew over a little one-on-one on the backyard court.

The Hot Wing King shifts between the sit-com manicness of the cooking contest, which takes place mostly in the up-left kitchen of Michael Carnahan’s open-walled set, and the melodrama of the extended-family situation, which happens in the rest of the house, including the up-right bedroom, meant to be upstairs, that EJ will occupy, and the down-left back terrace where the basketball hoop is located.  The living room, fittingly at center stage, is neutral territory where scenes from both the cooking comedy and the family drama play out.

The two parts of the play do cross over some, but TJ is pretty much exclusively involved in the family plot, though his son enters the cooking comedy near the end of the play when Dwayne makes him an honorary member of the New Wing Order.  Big Charles and Isom stick mostly to the cooking scenario—Isom takes an action that effects the outcome of the competition, but I won’t reveal it now (though Hall telegraphs it long before its repercussions are seen); only Dwayne and Cordell are really part of both elements of The Hot Wing King. 

This isn’t the kind of play in which any real disaster occurs; the most dramatic thing to happen to Dwayne’s circle is the result of the hot-wing contest (which I also won’t reveal).  In the end, everyone is accommodated, even the criminally-inclined TJ.  What Hall’s writing about isn’t the hot-wing contest or the conflict among Dwayne, TJ, and EJ; the play’s also not about the potential conflict between Dwayne and Cordell (who never actually brings up his concerns to Dwayne). 

In addition to the Memphis hot-wing festival, Hall also drew inspiration for The Hot Wing King from the relationship of her brother and his lover, but the play isn’t really about gay men, black men, or gay black men; neither gayness nor race is an issue: the first is only mentioned a few times more or less in passing and the second not at all.  The Hot Wing King’s about how these guys, who are mostly unrelated to one another, make a family. 

I can’t tell you much detail, at least not cogently, about Katori Hall’s Hot Wing King.  The production, which ran two hours and 20 minutes with one intermission, was well done, and the acting was fine . . . but I couldn’t understand about two-thirds of what anyone was saying!

The problem I had—and I really hate to put this into words—is that they spoke in Southern black colloquialisms, like code.  One reviewer called it “the vibrant dialect of black Memphis,” and, from their laughter, it seemed most of the rest of the audience got the idiom.

It wasn’t a serious drawback for me when two of the men were just talking—then I could understand them fine.  (These scenes had another problem, though it wasn’t about comprehension, but believability.)  When the guys are all together and runnin’ off at the mouth, which they do a lot, it was just all gobbledygook to me.  I couldn’t even distinguish individual words—or even individual speakers!  

I can tell what Hall’s main theme for the play is; that really comes out in the quieter one-on-one scenes.  It’s not a bad point—but I had to sit through all the incomprehensible scenes of code-talk while Hall and her characters make it. 

As I said, however, Broadnax’s production was fine aside from this problem—which, I suppose, was at least partly my failing for not knowing the characters’ vernacular.  (I wasn’t the only spectator with this difficulty.  Michael Sommers of New York Stage Review remarked, “Frankly, some of the deeply Southern-fried lingo escaped my old Eastern Seaboard ears . . . .”)  Perhaps the director could have found a way to accommodate the old, white Northerners like me without sacrificing the veracity—or verisimilitude is maybe a more accurate word—of the characters and milieu, but I’m not convinced he could have. 

I would never say, though, that the actors were anything less than convincing either in their characterizations of the six Memphians or in their use of the local argot.  The cast as a whole, especially the four New Wing Order members, formed a true mini-community, a club to which they all belonged.  Another word for this might be . . . family.

The only times that this sense of closeness and familiarity is strained is when the play waxes serious.  In those moments, Hall wrote the characters dialogue that’s hyper poetic and lofty—the polar opposite of the local patois.  The tonal shift doesn’t quite work smoothly, and as much as the actors worked to make the sober scenes sound like conversation, the dialogue kept coming out as epigraphs. 

(In his New York Times review of Hall’s play, Ben Brantley, who had a complaint similar to mine, quotes one example of this shift in diction.  This is Cordell speaking to Dwayne: “I see why you steady [sic] treat me like a child.  I am.  It’s like I’ve just been pushed out of the womb and I’m getting hit with the cold and the air and the lights and the truth.”)

As in any good ensemble play, all the actors performed at the same level of excellence.  Even in the scenes which I had a hard time understanding, I had no difficulty feeling that the actors understood one another completely, playing off (and with) one another like the close and fond friends they were supposed to be.  The quality of the cast and the work of Broadnax was not in doubt.

Singling out a few for the significance of their roles, either for their function in the plot or the character challenge Hall gave them, I compliment Korey Jackson for making Dwayne the levelheaded stalwart he is.  Jackson makes him unquestionably the pater of this ad hoc familias, keeping everyone on an even keel.  The actor keeps Dwayne outwardly on control, even as he lets us see the turmoil he’s feeling inside.

As his partner, Cordell, Toussaint Jeanlouis conveys his seriousness about making his hot wings, no matter how lightly anyone else may take the task.  He can seem as even-tempered as Dwayne, but he’s far more fragile, and Toussaint lets this out at times then hides it away at others.  As Isom, the most flamboyant character in The Hot Wing King, Sheldon Best plays the hell out of his character; it’s hard to tell who’s having more fun, Best or Isom.  He literally light ups the stage and makes the most of Sosa’s costumes.

Best is also one of the two darlings of reviewers in Broadnax’s production.  The other is Cecil Blutcher, making his Off-Broadway début as the young EJ.  Now, Blutcher is considerably older than EJ, and the extra maturity and self-control shows in the way the actor conveys EJ’s confusion and hurt over the death of his mother and his father’s less-than conscientious parenting and his own wish to go down a different path than TJ.  In Blutcher’s hands, EJ’s outbursts and recriminations still indicate an underlying yearning and even goodness.  The actor’s delivery of a horrifying speech describing his mother’s shooting reveals a lot about EJ and his troubled demeanor.

I’ve already described Michael Carnahan’s set, which comprised four playing areas (in descending order of activity: kitchen, living room, back yard patio, and upstairs bedroom).  One reviewer, Marilyn Stasio of Variety, thought the concept was superfluous, but I (like most of the published reviewers) found it well used and practical in terms of an acting environment, not to mention a fine visual representation of Dwayne’s comfortable, un-showy, middle-class lifestyle.  (The kitchen incidentally, is practical and the men actually cook the sauce on stage—so the Griffin is filled with the aroma of cooking hot-wing sauce.)

Sosa’s costumes did the same thing for the characters: display each one’s personality and way of presenting themselves to the world in an unobtrusive (well, except for Isom’s flashy dress) way.  Alan C. Edwards’s lighting nicely isolates or integrates the different playing areas as needed while still allowing us to be aware that this is a home, not a series of rooms.  (Carnahan’s open walls go a long way to establishing this from preset; though we know there are “walls” there, no room is unconnected from any other.)

I’ve collected a dozen reviews of The Hot Wing King to survey.  Brantley in the Times acknowledged that the play “has its problems” but continued that “this likable but lumpy production . . . is never better than when its all-male ensemble is functioning as an awkward but interdependent unit.”  The characters “have that palpable, physical ease with one another, both contented and irritable, that comes from being part of a family.”  Hall, Brantley contended, “is asking what constitutes a family in a world of fragmentation.”  He added that the core characters are gay “allows Hall to challenge conventional definitions of manhood and fatherhood in black America,” using “the bright, peppy context of a classical sitcom structure to do so.” 

“The balance between social soap opera and buoyant comedy isn’t always gracefully sustained,” reported the Timesman, further noting, “Nor is the script able to comfortably fold its more somber subplots into the running, frantic story of the cooking contest.”  Furthermore, Brantley found, “When characters . . . talk about their deeper feelings, they tend to shift into improbably poetic flights of diction.” 

“What’s refreshing here is the matter-of-fact depiction of black gay characters who may be dissatisfied, to varying degrees, with their own behavior but not, ultimately, because of their sexuality,” asserted the Times reviewer. 

In the Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout, quipping that “Katori Hall’s plays remind me of a sign I once saw over the front door of an unpretentious little restaurant: ‘NOT FANCY, BUT GOOD,’” observed that “there's nothing fancy about the down-to-earth dramaturgy of Ms. Hall's kitchen-sink chronicles of family life in all its varied aspects.” 

All she does—if “all” is the word—is tell stories about ordinary men and women who, as Jack Webb said of the characters in “Dragnet,” sound “as real as a guy pouring a cup of coffee.”  Yet truth gushes out every time they open their mouths, and before you know it, you’re caught up in their lives and fates.

Teachout dubbed Hall “one of the best playwrights we have,” and labeled The Hot Wing King “her finest play yet.”  After describing the situations in Hall’s script, the WSJ review-writer explained that “while ‘The Hot Wing King’ starts off playing the resulting complications for belly laughs, they end up being deeply, darkly serious.” 

Variety’s Stasio warned would-be theatergoers, “Good luck trying to follow the meandering plot of ‘The Hot Wing King,’” which she labels a “good-natured kitchen comedy.”  Stasio asserted, “Director Steve H. Broadnax III gets the best results when he keeps everybody and his uncle squished into the narrow kitchen.” 

The Variety reviewer continued, “Those crowd scenes work so well, you wonder why Hall . . . and her design team even bothered with the superfluous settings of a living room and an upstairs bedroom.  It certainly wasn’t demanded by the loose-limbed plot,” Stasio felt.  “Although it presents itself as a gay sitcom, the ‘sit’ isn’t sturdy enough to sustain the ‘com,’ which actually comes from the extremely likable characters.”

On TheaterScene.com, Julia Polinsky declared, “The play pushes all kinds of buttons and does it well.  Humor, anger, resentment, ambition, family, love, commitment: it’s all there, alternating between hilarious and searing.”  Polinsky reported that Hall “has written The Hot Wing King in a rapid-fire, delicious-sounding vernacular, which helps the play feel completely natural.”  The playwright “knows how to make you care as deeply about these men as Cordell cares about his wings,” felt the review-writer.  “Which is particularly interesting, because the basic story is pretty well-worn.”  Polinsky made some pertinent observations:

Lacking the milieu of gay African-American men, The Hot Wing King could be almost tedious—yawn, again?  The wayward teenage son looking for redemption?  The couple that’s uncomfortable with one person’s sacrifice and the other’s controlling behavior?  The friends, one warmhearted and wise, the other giddy and silly?  Sorry, but what’s new?  Been there, done that; let’s move on.  But Hall’s vivid characterizations and superb language, coupled with outstanding performances and terrific direction from Steve H. Broadnax III, makes The Hot Wing King feel fresh and new.  Not to mention, the knockout scenic design . . . and costumes that effortlessly create character . . . make it all work.  Really well.  Really, really well.

The reviewer concluded with the admonition: “Those tears in your eyes at The Hot Wing King?  They might be from the heat of some Suicide Flats, or from the heart of this tale of ambition, love, family, and Pili-Pili powder.” 

Labeling The Hot Wing King a “delectable new play,” James Wilson on Talkin’ Broadway remarked: “It is not uncommon for a theater production to appeal to the visual and aural senses, but it is rare that a show gets people talking about the enticing smells.”  Wilson quickly added, “To its credit, The Hot Wing King has abundant pleasures beyond its attention to aromatic detail.  Hall,” he reported, “artfully mixes a heaping dose of comedy, a dollop of sentimentality, and a dash of social commentary to create a rich and satisfying theater experience.” 

The TB reviewer lamented that the play “sometimes drifts into broad and formulaic situation-comedy mode, but the actors skillfully inject the characters . . . with complex humanity.”  He caviled a bit that, “[r]unning nearly two and a half hours, the play arrives a little overdone,” backing off, however, because “[t]here are a lot of laughs.”  Compared to other recent black-themed plays, Wilson asserted, “Hall’s The Hot Wing King does not push the boundaries of theatrical form and style in ways that other shows have, but it is certainly a viable contender.”  He concluded, “In its unabashed treatment of sexuality, masculinity and race, it is a play to be applauded and savored.”

On TheaterScene.net (not affiliated with the above-cited TheaterScene.com), Darryl Reilly labeled Hall’s play “uplifting” and said it’s “where comedy and drama deftly converge.”  He proclaimed it a “rewarding contemporary work.”  The reviewer praised “Hall’s gorgeous dialogue” as “a compendium of punchy lingo, colloquialisms and everyday realism,” and found, “Her command of structure is impeccable as the events unfold with force, suspense and insight.” 

Reilly labeled Broadnax’s staging “sharp,” Carnahan’s set design “artful,” Edwards’s lighting “adroit,” sound designers Luqman Brown and Robert Kaplowitz’s effects “sparkling,” and Sosa’s costumes “stylish.”  In conclusion, he affirmed, “The Hot Wing King’s accomplished depth continues to substantiate Hall’s preeminence as a leading playwright.”

The Hot Wing King “is a moderately heartwarming, sometimes amusing, occasionally clichéd dramedy with sitcom overtones,” declared Samuel L. Leiter on his blog, Theatre’s Leiter Side.  “Performed under Steve H. Broadnax III’s buoyant direction, with raucous energy,” Leiter complained, “Balancing sitcom business and darker issues is a precarious endeavor that the play doesn’t always master.”  The “jokes and bickering” that dominate the first part of the play until “[e]ventually, more serious personal matters intrude” forces “a tonal shift.” 

The work of the design team, Leiter wrote, “go far to making The Hot Wing King tasty, although not quite enough to sustain a two hour and 20 minute meal.”  The actors “definitely make The Hot Wing King a sweet-tasting, if not particularly hot, concoction that many will enjoy,” but Leiter, like me, warned that “many listeners . . . will find themselves depending more on the expressive acting than the words spoken to follow along closely.” 

Zachary Stewart characterized The Hot Wing King as “a sensitive portrait of black masculinity, and the tension that can arise between fathers and sons when they don't see eye-to-eye,” on TheaterMania.  “The linguistic richness of The Hot Wing King makes it particularly delicious to hear,” affirmed Stewart. 

Through clever wordplay, shameless vowel substitution, and ’90s pop music references, these men have developed a vernacular that feels central to their identities as individuals and cohesion as a community. 

“Steve H. Broadnax III has directed a snappy production that seamlessly slides back and forth over the border between comedy and drama,” reported the TM reviewer.  Stewart praised Carnahan’s set, but he declared Sosa’s costumes “brilliant.”  The reviewer’s final comment was: “But as both a comedy and a drama, The Hot Wing King is quite filling, and will leave you with a satisfying aftertaste days later.”

On New York Theatre Guide, Stanford Friedman called Hall’s play “a tasty new work” that “comes in three flavors.” 

As directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, it is a classic buddy comedy with friends and lovers involved in bouts of physical tomfoolery and good-natured ribbing.  It is also a honey-glazed drama seasoned with uncertainty and dipped in guilt.  And it is a hot take on sons and fathers, biological and otherwise, in black America . . . .

“Saucy.  Spicy.  One hardly needs to be an experienced theater critic for these adjectives to pop into one’s head during the prolonged opening section of Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King.”  So asserted Brian Scott Lipton at the top of his Theater Pizzazz review—and then added, “The other word that popped into my critical head, however, was ‘surprising.’” 

Hall . . . is usually a writer of substance, so I didn’t expect her to simply pen an extended sitcom.  And Hall doesn’t disappoint.  The play suddenly makes a sharp tonal turn, and while the laughs don’t completely disappear, much of the next two hours is devoted to a dramatic and stunningly realistic exploration of several different kinds of male relationships.

The TP review-writer concluded: “Like a good hot wing, the play ends up having not just fire, but remarkable depth and flavor, all of which is brought out to perfection by an incredibly talented cast under Steve H. Broadnax III’s assured direction.”

Melissa Rose Bernardo, in the first of two notices for New York Stage Review, revealed, “It sounds hard to believe given the title, but The Hot Wing King is, at its core, not really a play about hot wings.”  Bernardo explained that “the wing-ding is really just a pretext . . . to bring together this group of men.”  The source of the drama?  Bernardo affirmed that “there’s no recipe, and there are no step-by-step instructions, for Dwayne and Cordell’s relationship.  Like the rest of us, they’ll just have to wing it.”

In NYSR review number two, Michael Sommers labeled the play “[f]requently a laugh out loud new comedy,” then explained, “On its occasionally serious side, the good-natured play considers a couple of issues that probably confront many an adult male relationship today.”  Sommers pronounced the première “smart and sassy” and called Hall “ever-astonishing.”  The second NYSR reviewer pointed out that Hall “develops the likable story” by “cunningly entwin[ing] thoughtful matters with some fairly broad comedy.” 

“A playful though ultimately sincere dramedy with an upbeat viewpoint, dynamic characters, and a happy ending,” reported Sommers, “The Hot Wing King is agreeably performed by a company of tiptop actors who appear highly natural and easy in their intimate interactions.”  The review-writer praised Sosa’s costumes and found that Broadnax “has done quite a capable job in guiding his company through the play’s changing emotional subtleties.”  He concluded that the play, which he found “sweet” and “relatively easygoing,” “delivers a worthy American story for today that is composed, produced, and performed with considerable intelligence and charm.”

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DUE TO THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, THE HOT WING KING  ENDED ITS RUN AT THE SIGNATURE THEATRE COMPANY ON 11 MARCH 2020