In this world, according to Benjamin Franklin, nothing can be said to be certain except for death and taxes. And sometimes an eggplant. A fancier name for eggplant is aubergine, and that is also the title of Julia Cho's lovely new play having its world premiere at Berkeley Rep's refurbished thrust stage now known as Peet's Theatre.
While eggplants could even get featured billing in the program, Aubergine uses the fleshy fruit as a kind of symbol for how food and its tastes help define everything from families to huge swathes of society. When you're a cook, a good cook, you have a transporting power that can rekindle memories that are decades old or send you to another continent. At least that's the heightened sensory experiences that Cho visits in her play.
But not everyone is on the same frequency. Ray is an up-and-coming chef whose Korean-born father disapproves of this career choice and is satisfied serving a chicken dinner from a bucket. He is dying, a hospital bed set up in the dining room where he is receiving home hospice care from an unnaturally calm and prescient caregiver who offers up a homegrown eggplant as a gift to Ray, with Ray later returning the favor with a meal made from hard-to-find Caribbean eggplants that conjures up for Lucien his own homeland.
The play approaches death with a gentle dignity, although rough emotions are still in play. At first she's a complication and then a lifeline as Ray's former girlfriend reluctantly returns to his life to serve as an interpreter between Ray and his Korean-speaking uncle, long estranged from his brother, who arrives unannounced to say goodbye to the dying man. The atmosphere that Cho brings to the overall situation can be sad but never gloomy. There is, in fact, considerable humor, from the uncle's charades-style wordless explanation of his trip from Korea to a recipe for a supposedly mystical soup that includes a complicated but matter-of-fact way to properly kill the undersized turtle the uncle has provided. Not to worry, it isn't turtle soup but merely the mock that is eventually prepared.
Of the basic components to sustain life �" air, water, and food �" it is the latter that provides the most opportunity for interpretation. Every culture has developed a cuisine from the ingredients at hand, and even as crosspollination has exploded in more recent times, the notion of a comfort food often calls us back to our roots. Cho explores these notions gracefully, without the play becoming a nonstop treatise on comestibles. The hunger for connection is revealed even when food is off the table.
Tony Taccone's direction is in careful tune with Cho's writing, which ranges from gentle to intense without ever becoming overwrought. It's also a wonderful cast he has assembled, headed by the low-key charisma of Tim Kang as the wary, emotionally immature, but ultimately warm son of the dying man who is almost always in our view.
As the ailing father, Sab Shimono mostly must lie in bed with only small reactions to stimuli, but he becomes a potent presence in an out-of-body manifestation. Tyrone Mitchell Henderson, as caregiver Lucien, is an almost beatifically wise presence who can be slyly funny at the same time. Speaking nary a word of English as Ray's uncle, Joseph Steven Yang still draws us into his modern/provincial world, abetted by projected translations and the appealing Jennifer Lim as Ray's sometimes girlfriend and Korean-speaking interpreter. Safiya Fredericks engagingly opens the play with a monologue about being a foodie, and then mysteriously disappears until her return at the end, when it all makes sense.
The play does float several scenes toward the end that seem they could be the finale, but Cho seems reluctant to let us go. In some plays, that could be an aggravation, but in Aubergine, they are like amuse-bouffes that come at the end of the meal.
Aubergine will run through March 20 at Berkeley Rep. Tickets are $29-$89. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to berkeleyrep.org.