It is challenging to avoid making culinary references when assessing Seared, a tasty yet underdone comedy about craziness in a restaurant kitchen by—see, there I go already with using cooking terms to describe the quality of the latest dramatic dish concocted by Theresa Rebeck.
Apologies, folks, somehow these words escape through my fingers. Colleagues likely will employ similar phrases to describe Seared, which opened on Monday in an entertaining off-Broadway premiere by MCC Theater.
Delivering a wonderfully intense performance as a deranged chef is Raúl Esparza, an excellent actor who always is best when acting intensely. Wielding a wicked knife and shooting death-ray stares at the three other people in Rebeck’s comedy, Esparza frequently gets all fired up as Harry, a mad genius at cookery whose tiny restaurant in Brooklyn just nabbed a nice blurb in a New York mag food page.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★ review here.]
Fresh customers demand the scallops mentioned in the item, but Harry considers himself too much of an artist to repeat a triumph. So he removes the dish from the menu.
Mike, the long-suffering business partner who pays all the bills and is fed up with Harry’s diva behavior, brings into their joint Emily, an ambitious consultant. Arguments flare up.
Emily cools Harry’s resentment with fancy cutlery, a nightly cleaning service, and blandishments even more seductive. Her big plans to expand the restaurant’s size and menu eventually detonate temperamental explosions in Harry’s kitchen. Involved also in these two-act, two-hour doings is Rodney, a smart youngster who apparently is the eatery’s only other personnel.
Seriously insubstantial in characterization and motivation—the entire Harry-Emily affair is illustrated almost entirely by a smooch—Rebeck’s amusing though tenuous piece benefits from the realistic production directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, who spares little expense in providing a working kitchen to amplify the action. Designer Tim Mackabee’s effective setting features a steel stove and sink that affords the actual sizzle and splash that the play itself tends to lack.
Seared does not lack for laughs, however. Ever a dab hand at snark dialogue, Rebeck crafts a number of wry exchanges regarding food, customers, pretentious dining, and commercialization that are expertly fielded by the company. The occasional whiff of actual cooking from the stage lends verisimilitude to everything, as do the impressive knife (and acting) skills demonstrated by Esparza, whose bristly Harry gets orgasmic over high-grade fish and similar luxury items.
Esparza’s fiery character is neatly matched by Krysta Rodriguez, whose ultra-confident Emily looks coolly cheerful in the face of his hot displeasure. The wanly underwritten character of Mike gives David Mason little to work with, but he rolls along with the punchier others. There is a quiet assurance to W. Tré Davis’ performance as Rodney that bespeaks his character’s later actions.
The director, whose Broadway credits include the hilarious Hand to God and that dandy Kevin Kline revival of Present Laughter, certainly knows how to stage funny business and he ably guides the actors’ skillful interplay over the thin ice of Seared. In marking the transitions between the play’s scenes, the red and yellow colors of David Weiner’s lighting aptly suggest the glare of food warming lamps. The ease of von Stuelpnagel’s staging considerably enhances Rebeck’s comedy.
Speaking of comedies, the environs for this one reminds me of the charms of The Art of Dining, quite a sophisticated and thoughtful 1979 play by Tina Howe set in a little gourmet restaurant in suburban New Jersey. Gosh, it would be nice if a company like Second Stage—originally devoted to providing second looks at underappreciated plays—might let audiences get another taste of The Art of Dining. Perhaps MCC Theater will give them a good deal for the kitchen setting used here.
