Theatre in Review: Aubergine (Playwrights Horizons)For a play about the salubrious effects of good food, Aubergine could use a little spicing up. Julia Cho has cooked up a comic drama about the members of a fractured family taking part in a death watch -- subject matter that would seem to provide all sorts of dramatic opportunities -- but the result is a heavy dose of inspiration designed to go down as innocuously as a tofu smoothie. It's not bad, but it's certainly not flavorful. Ray, Cho's protagonist, is a chef who abandons his career when his ailing (and unnamed) father is sent home from the hospital for end-of-life care. (One of the play's more interesting twists comes late in Act II, when we learn how this abstemious soul accidentally developed cirrhosis.) In the early passages, Cho unequivocally makes clear -- seconded in Tim Kang's beautifully understated performance -- how Ray feels utterly alone in the world. And for good reason: Ray's mother is long dead, the victim of an accident during a visit to Korea, where she was born. The only surviving relations are in Korea, among them Ray's uncle, from whom his father is estranged. Ray's childhood was spent in a standoff with his father; his adult life has been lived in the shadow of the older man's disapproval. Ray admits to choosing cooking as a career as a means of escape -- the kitchen was the only room he never recalls seeing his father enter -- but he feels the sting of parental disappointment, saying, dejectedly, "He never liked anything I made." All this helps explain why Ray has thrown over his career to care for his dad: He is still seeking approval from a man now at death's door. Cornelia, Ray's ex-girlfriend, learning of the situation, says, "You didn't have to go through that alone." Ray replies, "Yeah. Actually I did." Ray has gingerly contacted Cornelia -- things ended badly between them -- because she speaks Korean, asking her to telephone his uncle and inform him of the bad news. ("So you're not dead," she says on meeting up with Ray, by way of noting that he ran off without any explanation.) Soon, Ray's uncle arrives, carrying a turtle that he expects Ray to use in preparing a healing soup for the patient. Shunted aside are the facts that Ray's father is comatose and unable to take even liquids, and that Ray has lost interest in cooking and eating. The rest of Aubergine follows Cornelia, Lucien, and Ray's uncle as they try to coax Ray's culinary sense, and soul, back to life even as his father fades away. You might think that a situation like this would be rife with unresolved feelings and lingering resentments, spiked with outbursts of unpleasant truths, but Aubergine minds its manners, rarely, if ever, raising its voice. Cho acts rather like a grief counselor, smoothly guiding her characters to a sense of closure. (As Lucien, the hospice nurse assigned to Ray's father, notes: "A peaceful death: This is a wealth beyond compare.") Whatever problems existed between Ray and Cornelia simply vanish as she elects to stay by his side. Ray's uncle kneels at his long-lost brother's bedside and weeps, waving away their decades-long separation with a simple tale about their mother preferring him. Lucien, who endured a long stint in a refugee camp (location unspecified), is dangerously close to being the Magical Negro -- seemingly untouched by his years of suffering as he ladles out little homilies about life and death. As directed by Kate Whoriskey, Aubergine unfolds in a kind of funereal hush that suppresses any unruly or problematic emotions. As it follows Ray to a predetermined state of forgiveness and acceptance, a certain falsity sets in, and it is never fully dispelled. In addition to Kang, there is fine work from Sue Jean Kim, sassy and appealing as Cornelia; Stephen Park as Ray's father, who occasionally steps out of his bed to reenact mortifying scenes from the past; Joseph Steven Yang as Ray's Uncle, earning honest laughs as he struggles to communicate with Ray, who speaks no Korean; Michael Potts as Lucien, doing his best to take the sanctimony out of his big speeches; and Jessica Love, as the wife of a foodie, who kicks off the play with a long monologue about their culinary hunting expeditions, then vanishes until the final moments, when she figures in a twist of uncertain impact. Derek McLane has devised a clever scenic concept involving a curved wall that serves as a background for several of the play's many moments of direct address, then opens up slightly for a hospital scene, and, finally, curves all the way upstage to reveal the dining room where Ray's father rests at home. Peter Kaczorowski's lighting flows gracefully from one scene to the next; as always, his work feels effortless. Jennifer Moeller's costumes are especially apt when drawing contrasts between the younger and older generations' fashion choices. M. L. Dogg's sound design includes some pleasant guitar arrangements and such effects as the ambient noises of a restaurant kitchen. Aubergine has a fair number of funny, perceptive, and touching aspects, but, ultimately, it feels too polite, too obviously calculated to provide a sense of uplift, too determined to scrub its central situation of anything too ugly or disturbing. Real life is messier than this. -- David Barbour 
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