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Eston Fung and Steven Johnson as John Wu and Paul.
By five minutes into Salt Pepper Ketchup, the latest play at the Yale Cabaret, all of the major players — and their conflicts with each other — have been introduced, and the audience is hooked.
There is John Wu, owner of the Superstar Chinese Take Out, who has gradually won over black residents of Point Breeze, Philadelphia, with his grease-stained walls, secret “chicken oil,” and steely, uncompromising resolve to stay. In Superstar’s take-out window, closed in by bulletproof plexiglass, is his wife, exhausted and ready to move. At the joint’s tables, under harsh florescent light, sit Tommy and Boodah, longtime residents of the neighborhood who feel threatened by the palpable presence of gentrification around them — tidy, polite new coffeeshops, a burgeoning co-op, and lily-white hipsters.
Then in walk the two characters around whom the final pieces will fall. Cece is a single, working mother trying to do right by her kids, even if part of that necessitates carry-out five of seven nights a week. Paul is a doe-eyed transplant to the area singing the praises of organic Lacinato kale and “new diversities of taste” as he drips enthusiasm, apologizing for his white privilege in a way that is immediately cloying and spot-on. For him, the neighborhood is not Point Breeze but Newbold, the name given to it by a smiling, talk-miles-at-you team of food-warriors-cum-gentrification-vampires who are starting a co-op just down the block from Superstar.
The play — which runs through Saturday night — is deliciously strong in theatrical realism, and it’s no surprise when racial and socioeconomic tensions come to the fore. Paul convinces Cece to buy into the co-op while she is waiting on her order at Superstar. At stage left, John frets and fumes, furious at Paul for endangering his business by this very act of recruitment. His wife, Linda, half-listens as she prepares Cece’s order. At the right, Tommy and Boodah sit perplexed, and then angry, at the transaction. A seething, fast-burning anger follows Paul out of the store, down the street and all the way home as he is urged to leave, Wu ultimately threatening a charge for loitering. When an unfortunate chain of events, fueled by fear and vindictiveness on all sides, follows, it feels inevitable.
McKenzie as Linda Wu.
That’s where Salt Pepper Ketchup hits hardest. It’s not a play about Point Breeze exclusively. It’s a play about Detroit and New Orleans and Atlanta, Brooklyn and Queens, Oakland. And yes, about New Haven, where the same social forces have left their thick, bright white bootprints all over the city.
Having grown up in Point Breeze himself, playwright Josh Wilder, a first year in Yale’s graduate playwriting program, seems genuinely hungry to answer the question of who gentrification ultimately benefits. He’s lived it enough to write it, he said during a talkback. “Every time I go into a coffeeshop or new bar [in Point Breeze],” he told the audience, “I feel like I’m making a political statement.”
With formidable grace and nuance, however, he allows every character — minus a few cops that are no good at all — the stage time, language, and margin of creativity to tell a compelling side of the story.
John Wu’s less-than-tip-top standards for Superstar, and not simply rising rents, threaten to be his downfall. The more the play unravels, the more complex he becomes: an immigrant investor in the black community who balks at the possibility of health inspections and new menu items but does not have a sustainable plan for staying in business, beyond plying minorities with inexpensive, sodium-packed food. Cece’s ultimate plight — joining the co-op, only to be unable to afford anything in the store — is uncomfortably relatable for New Haveners.
And you kind of hate Paul, in that white-folks-have-always-been-telling-folks-of-color-what-to-do way, until the Beaver Cleaver facade breaks down, and you realize that he is in the neighborhood because he can’t afford to live anywhere else and believes — really believes — that what he’s doing is right.
For a work that unfolds in one location, over what cannot be more than a few days, Salt Pepper Ketchup is exquisitely expansive. “I really wanted to write a play where everyone was right,” he explained to the audience after the show, and he has. He has also made sure they all have something to lose, too.
Johnson and Mia Antoinette as Paul and Cece.
The cast, filled with Yale first-year graduate students in drama, acting, and playwriting, is a total delight. Mia Antoinette is majestic as Cece, showing off some admirable voice work for comic intent at points. As Linda Wu, Francesca Fernandez McKenzie heartbreakingly commits to the role of beleaguered and work-weary wife. Steven Johnson is fearless and punchy as he peels back the economic layers of residential development and food advocacy, and James Udom delivers as Tommy. Also of note is the play’s director, Al Heartley, from whom we should all look forward to seeing more work.
There’s more to look forward to, too. As Wilder told the audience, this season’s Salt Pepper Ketchup it is only Act I or a longer play in the works. The subject matter may deal with a vicious cycle, but this is only the beginning.
Salt Pepper Ketchup runs at the Yale Cabaret through Jan. 16. Click here for more information.
