Caldron of emotions in 'Kitchen'

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The winter theater season gets off to a tough but compelling start with the American premiere of Kwame Kwei-Armah's "Elmina's Kitchen," a sobering play about West Indian immigrants living in Hackney, a London neighborhood known for its polyglot gangs and its "Murder Mile."

Fans of British television may know Mr. Kwei-Armah for his long-running stint on the BBC medical drama "Casualty" and as a participant in the reality show "Fame Academy." Inspired by the jazzy musicality and languid riffs of American playwright August Wilson, Mr. Kwei-Armah began writing for the theater.

"Elmina's Kitchen" was commissioned by London's National Theatre in 2001, and premiered in 2003, netting the author the Evening Standard Award for most promising playwright.

Set in a woebegone take-out shop in Hackney, "Elmina's Kitchen" gleams with promise. Like his mentor Mr. Wilson, Mr. Kwei-Armah displays a virtuoso ease with dialogue, and with language that dances and darts with prizefighter-grace. His characters speak in a West Indian-Northeast London slang that sounds exotic and working class all at once.

For the first 10 minutes or so, you may feel as though you've wandered into a foreign language production without subtitles, but after awhile you relax into the rhythms and the patois begins to make sense.

In the world of "Elmina's Kitchen" (the name "Elmina" refers both to the mother of one of the characters and a Portuguese slave port on the west coast of Africa), words and language are tantamount.

In traditional Caribbean culture, a man's reputation and virility are not only measured by sexual conquests -- but also by his prowess in sweet talk, telling stories, engaging in "slang" contests, and the ability to argue and debate in an erudite manner.

The characters in Mr. Kwei-Armah's play definitely possess the gift of gab. Especially the older men hanging out in Deli's (Curtis McClarin) shop, Elmina's Kitchen -- rendered by set designer Neil Patel in such lovingly shambling detail you want to step up onstage and order a roti during intermission.

Baygee (Ernest Perry Jr.) is a transplant from Barbados who peddles ladies clothes and is fond of telling rambling, ribald stories about amorous women, while Deli's n'er-do-well father, Curtis (Sullivan Walker), is a flamboyant public orator whose thundering diatribes lack only a pulpit.

In contrast to the garrulous older characters is Deli, a former boxer who keeps his grief and frustrations bottled up inside. He's angry at the world, but most of all angry at himself for having dreams. "Man is not supposed to want. I wanted," he says in a rare outspoken moment. His son Ashley (LeRoy McClain) and Digger (Thomas Jefferson Byrd), a flashy local gangster, are even more taciturn than Deli.