A hot wing making team are forced to confront personal demons, chilli and spice in this delicious UK debut from Katori Hall.

Chicken wings are synonymous with the deep south; Memphis’s tourist board proclaims it to be the ‘hot wing capital of the world’ and Katori Hall’s play uses wings as a metaphor for her characters, both having complexities and depths, that resist casual stereotyping.

Taking place in Dwayne’s (Rhoden) house, the play is stylised to feel like a mid-ninety’s sitcom. Cordell (Kirwan), the leader of a competitive amateur hot wing making team, the New Wing Order, dissects the science behind the perfect wing in preparation for the annual competition. The rest of the team is comprised of Big Charles (Jason Barnett), his romantic interest, Isom (Odele) – a modern-day griot, replete with perfect mascara and pieds en l’air; and, eventually, EJ (Denton), Dwayne’s nephew, who joins the team after an argument with his father, TJ (Walcott).

Hall’s brilliance is to introduce conflict with a measured subtlety. Her characters resist easy narrative tick boxes: Cordell is a father of two going through a divorce after coming out of the closet; TJ and Dwayne’s guilt over the death of Jalisa – Dwayne’s sister and TJ’s girlfriend – unites them in grief. EJ is a star basketball player who traps with his father. He is also a little boy missing his mother doing what he can to survive.

Roy Alexander Weise’s direction is a wonder: from the split-level stage and spinning kitchen top to the mirrored anguish of Dwayne and TJ, Weise creates indelible tableaus. Alongside this, Femi Tomowo’s music demonstrates its importance as a tool of community cohesion, a soundscape of joy, despair and everything in between. The creative team should be congratulated for taking the themes of masculinity, sexuality, parenthood, police brutality, guilt and love and making them feel accessible and funny in equal measure.

What will linger long in the memory, beyond the stunning performances, and how intimately Hall knows Memphis – the Ja Morant poster and the importance of the basketball team to the city is woven throughout – is the way characters can give hard truths to others they resist seeing in themselves. The Hot Wing King portrays the emotional calluses that build up and how the love of a community is the only thing that can heal.

Check out more from National Theatre| Find out more about Roy Alexander Weise | Katori Hall |
| See more Off/Stage Review Bytes on IG |