Review: Ex-Lovers Eat Their Hearts Out in Savory Romantic Comedy ‘Table 17’

10.09.2024 00:28

New York Observer

Over the years audiences have seen many sides of magnetic powerhouse Kara Young. There was Troubled Teen Kara in Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven and All the Natalie Portmans. Ex-Con Single Mother Kara marked her Broadway debut in Clyde’s. And who could forget Panicky Southern Ingenue Kara in Purlie Victorious last year? But I was not prepared for the side served in Douglas Lyons’s restaurant-based Table 17: Sultry Heartbreaker Kara. Exuding sensual swagger from every pore of her pixyish frame, Young’s Jada is a complicated modern woman who wants what we all want: tender devotion, satisfying sex and loyalty. Finding all that on one menu—or in one man—is the challenge.

Happily, the flavor blend that Lyons and director Zhailon Levingston cook up at MCC Theater is heaven on the taste buds. The ever-sparkling Young shares the stage with sweet but brooding Biko Eisen-Martin as Jada’s ex, Dallas, and the spicy Michael Rishawn plays a host of outré secondary characters: a bitchy gay maître d’, a swaggering bartender bro, and a manipulative co-worker of Jada’s who tries to steal her from Dallas. The three actors balance beautifully in a very approachable rom com that goes down easy.

Lyons, who made his Broadway debut coming out of the pandemic with Chicken and Biscuits (2021), sticks to popular idioms. The earlier work was a sitcom about members of an extended Black family bonding and bickering at a funeral; Table 17 is a Black romance with plenty of laughs and clear antecedents in genre flicks such as Love & Basketball, Brown Sugar and How Stella Got Her Groove Back. In fact, posters of those very movies adorn the wall as you enter scenic designer Jason Sherwood’s glittery eatery—called Bianca’s—a chic arrangement of two-tops lit from within beneath a jumbo disco ball. A few audience members sit at tables ranged around the space, giving them a close-up view of Jada’s momentous dinner date with Dallas.

But is it a date? The couple broke up over two years ago and the feelings are still raw. They’re both working on themselves: Jada’s in therapy and Dallas is in AA. In an amusing early soliloquy, Jada agonizes over what to wear so as not to send a wrong signal. “I look good. Like, succulent good,” she says, admiring her own reflection in a skin-tight dress. “Like, I’d tap this ass from the back if I could, kinda good. The cakes are perched, the nails are mannied, and when he steps into that restaurant, Dallas will salivate at the very woman he walked away from—WAIT, am I overdressed?” Jada literally asks the audience for their advice, so be ready to speak your mind. Lyons trashes the fourth wall with playful abandon. Jada has a couple of micro-asides to the audience that are delightfully silly: a whole light and sound cue for her to breathe, “Oh.”

The core of the play is the initially awkward dinner between the ex-paramours, as they tentatively grope toward honesty and clarity about how they drifted apart, until an act of betrayal signaled the end. Lyons intersperses the table scenes with flashbacks that conjure sympathy for the couple as well as tension about what caused the split. Dallas felt insecure about not being the breadwinner; Jada became increasingly frustrated by his immersion in a music career. Lyons aims for crowd-pleasing relatability and hits the target; the result is an attractive, fast-moving comic showcase for three excellent performers.

Costume designer Devario D. Simmons deserves a special shout-out for the quick-change tearaway costumes crafted for Young. One moment Jada is bantering with her flirty coworker Eric (Rishawn) in an airplane; the next she has whipped off her flight attendant uniform and returned to Jada’s cutoff jeans and loose white blouse at Bianca’s. Ben Stanton’s lively lighting takes us to clubs, basketball games and cozy domestic interiors with fluid grace, and Nikiya Mathis (JaJa’s African Hair Braiding) brings her customary tonsorial magic to Jada’s flowing mane and highlights. Everyone complains (justly) about today’s dating hellscape, but Table 17 makes you optimistic about love—at least for the duration of a meal.