←Recommendations of Or the MSG Play

Love this play! Saw the Old globe production - it moves and there is never a dull moment. Keiko's voice is necessary!

I was lucky enough to experience this bonkers-fun piece during its recent run at the vaunted Old Globe in San Diego, where I usher. After seeing the show, I raced home and paid full-price for tickets to return with my husband.

There's much to unpack in Exotic Deadly. But at its core Green gives us a rollicking romp through issues of racism and misunderstanding that WORK (many other writers' don't) without ever hitting us with a sledgehammer. Alongside the characters' challenges, the story of how MSG became so misunderstood is a metaphor for much disinformation and misunderstanding of present times.

A hilarious play about the history of MSG and racist misinformation told from the perspective of a 90s teenage Japanese American girl struggling to accept and assert identity in one that prizes whiteness and Western values. Green is always funny with a dark, acerbic wit but it is Ami's reconciliation with her family, and understanding of her ancestors, that had me tearing up at the end. A beautiful and a badass play.

This genre-bending, uber-theatrical play is a delight. Ami is a powerhouse of a character, and to see the world refracted through her perspective is kaleidoscopic, funny, and poignant. Keiko explores with such specific and nuanced brushstrokes the ways Ami is and her whole family have been made to feel othered as Japanese and Japanese Americans through both external and internal forces with such clarity; she also offers us a narrative that other folks who've been made to feel outsiders in "hostile territory" in the US can connect to so clearly. I'd love to see this living on its feet!

Love how experimental and wild this play is. Such a funny take on what it means to discover and be proud of your culture in a world that values assimilation.