Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play
Keiko Green
San Francisco Playhouse
In 1908, a Japanese scientist isolated and duplicated the savory taste of a particular type of seaweed, leading to a flavor enhancer that over the years became very popular in Asian cooking. In 1968, an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine by an unknown Dr. Ho Man Kwok claimed numerous, negative side effects through the use of this ingredient. While the FDA and other scientists debunked this claim, popular media outlets began to publish warnings about the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, building on long-held and pervasive racist biases all across the U.S. against Asians. Soon, the general public shunned any restaurant that continued to use monosodium glutamate, with MSG becoming feared for its supposed high sodium content (actually one-third less than salt) and its cause of everything from sweats, headaches, high blood pressure, and much worse.
The horrific injustice against MSG and its users that is based on a history of American anti-AAPI prejudice is the backbone of Keiko Green’s coming-of-age Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play, now receiving its Bay Area premiere at San Francisco Playhouse. The time-traveling journey of a fourteen-year-old Japanese-American girl begins in 1999 as she unravels the history of a grandfather who first formulated the much-maligned, much-avoided MSG. Generally moving at the speed of raging, teenage hormones, Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play is packed with 1990’s pop culture, Japanese amine, cartoonish characters, many start-and-stop sequences often full of slow motion, and loud bursts of music that a teen in the ’90s might relish.
Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer is ADHD-hyper Ami who is our combination narrator, MC, and central character. Ami is a bit of a shy outcast at school who is ridiculed by classmates for the bento box lunches she brings everyday (that “smell like farts”). Her health-conscious mother (Nicole Tung) refuses just to pack a turkey sandwich, insisting Ami needs her vegetables (all exactingly cut, of course). That her more than perfect, popular, older brother, Kenji (James Aaron Oh) never complains of course irritates Ami to no end. The daily lunch box battles lead to frequent big arguments, shouting, and struggles in the home front that in Ami’s telling become martial arts battles in stage-filling slo-mo.
But one day as Amy actually likes a tasty miso soup her Mom gives her, she also discovers Mom has sprinkled the delicious mixture with white crystals from a small, clear bottle. To Ami’s horror, she learns that her Mom has all along been using MSG in all her lunches– the same “poison” she has heard decried on television and has read in a dust-filled paper from 1968 her brother has found in their house that claims MSG “kills people” and “destroys lives.”
Not only is Ami now shocked her mother has been feeding her the stuff making people all across the country sick, she has read in the mysterious paper that her grandfather discovered MSG long ago in Japan. In other words to Amy, Ojichan — the grandpa she does not remember but is pictured holding her when she is two — was, in Amy’s estimation, “basically an evil scientist.” Feeling nauseous and lightheaded after arriving at school, she is wondering if it is the MSG, the horrible realizations “my life is a sham and my entire family is basically criminals,” or the fact she has not eaten lunch.
In the mind and imagination of this overly excitable teen, Ami’s world explodes into a hyper-speed, frenetic series of scenes in which a class assignment to write about her family history, a new hip girl at school named “Exotic Deadly” (or MSG for short), and another fight at home when Amy insults her brother and calls her a “bitch” all lead Amy on an odyssey through the murky waters of a vast sea called “Rock Bottom.”
Amy eventually arrives in 1947 Tokyo where the droplets squeezed from seaweed in 1908 are now being turned into white crystals by none other than her scientist grandfather. Amy is uncovering much more about the early, celebratory days of MSG (including meeting a younger, even more beautiful version of “Exotic Deadly”) before once again time floating away through time, ending now in 1968 Tokyo. There, her Grandfather tells her to go back to her own time and to find Dr. Ho Man Kwok, author of the just published article that is full of lies about MSG. Amy’s new mission is to find the old man in 1999 and correct all his wrongs.
Amy’s fantastical exploration of her family’s history and of an eventual discovery of just how much her mother and brother mean to her is in no way a straight-line, connect-the-dots story. Keiko Green’s script is a wild and wooly mash-up of locations and times, reality and fantasy as well as live versions resembling animation, video games, and popular TV/movies of the late ’90s. Director Jesca Prudencio makes ample use of a large turntable to have characters and scenes appear from and usually quickly disappear into a long, hanging wall of curtains (scenic design by Heather Kenyon). Kathleen Qiu’s often hilariously outlandish and other-worldly costumes along with Amber Loudermilk’s wigs are quite a show unto themselves.
While Amy and Exotic Deadly (Francesca Fernandez) are portrayed by the same two actors throughout, the other four cast members play a whole host of characters. Besides Mom, Nicole Tung is Amy’s social studies teacher named Mrs. Jamholder, a waitress serving multiple dishes of Chinese food in the local “Bamboo Panda” restaurant, Amy’s grandmother in old Japan, and many others. Likewise along with her brother, James Aaron Oh plays Amy’s grandfather scientist Ojichan, a super sexy doctor, a neurologist, and more.
Particularly funny throughout are Phil Wong and Edric Young who cannot help but remind one of Garth and Myers from “Wayne’s World” as they appear time and again as a range of similar-appearing/acting characters in a variety of settings and time periods.
All the cast members play parts often requiring near manic behavior, much jumping and running, lots of voice demands on their vocal cords, and behaviors that resemble those that animation artists might have wished they had sketched. The result is an often disjointed hubbub of activity that loosely tells (in starts and stops) the important history of how a simple, nature-based flavoring became — and still is in most American’s minds — an ingredient dangerous and most often associated with Asian cooking, to be avoided at all costs (even though the same ingredient is in everything from tomatoes to Doritos).
While I am sure that for many audience members the style of presenting Amy’s journey of discovery works well for a very entertaining evening, I have to confess the production overall did not for me. I quickly got tired of the exaggerated expressions, the bombardment of stimuli, and the interruptions of events and characters. Although I had just the evening prior highly enjoyed a production of a different time-traveling, imagination-driven, coming-of-age play also involving a young girl, this particular ambitious undertaking by San Francisco Playhouse of Keiko Green’s Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play is just not my cup of tea.
Rating: 3- E
Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play continues in a one-hour, forty minute (no intermission) BayArea premiere through March 8, 2025, at San Francisco Playhouse, , 450 Post Street, San Francisco. Tickets for all remaining performances are now sold out. For possible wait list, call the box office at 415-677-9596.
Photo Credits: Jessica Palopoli
