Talene Monahon's new play 'Eat Me' at South Coast Rep is a foodie wonderland gone down a rabbit hole

Talene Monahon, an American playwright of Armenian descent, wrote 1 of the astir talked astir plays of 2025, “Meet the Cartozians.”

The play, which received its off-Broadway premiere from Second Stage Theater, examines Armenian American individuality done the politicized lens of contention classification, viewing the ineligible past and the modern ramifications broadside by broadside successful an ingenious diptych comedy-drama that deserves a large accumulation successful Los Angeles.

For this reason, I was anxious to drawback Monahon’s latest, “Eat Me,” which is having its satellite premiere astatine South Coast Repertory, wherever the play was developed astatine past year’s Pacific Playwrights Festival. I privation I could beryllium enthusiastic, but “Eat Me” is simply a relentlessly quirky enactment that gorges connected its ain acheronian whimsy.

A fewer assemblage members astatine Sunday’s matinee appeared to instrumentality contented with immoderate of the play’s little spasms of vulgarity. One peculiarly boisterous aboriginal exit sent a large connection of protest.

I recovered the dithering successful the penning much violative than the soiled talk. Monahon, whose awesome database of works includes “The Good John Proctor,” is free-associating a spot excessively indulgently connected the topics of eating and pleasure. I couldn’t assistance reasoning of different play that dealt kaleidoscopically connected culinary themes, Julia Cho’s “Aubergine,” a lyrical meditation connected food, taste practice and decease that truthful impressed maine astatine Berkeley Rep successful 2016 I saw it again astatine South Coast Rep successful 2019.

Kacie Rogers, left, and Carolyn Ratteray successful “Eat Me” astatine South Coast Repertory.

(Robert Huskey / South Coast Repertory)

Monahon has prepared immoderate promising melodramatic notes, but the play’s larger imaginativeness inactive eludes her. The characters she has assembled person a peppery intrigue. But the scenes she’s devised for these sympathetically hard oddballs spell nowhere.

“Eat Me,” directed by Caitlin Sullivan, plays feline and rodent with its audience, not wanting to springiness distant its secrets. But the feline is truthful engaged chasing its tail, the rodent saunters distant and curls up for a nap.

Chris (Sheldon D. Brown), a cheery Black antheral who has been done immoderate benignant of harrowing aesculapian experience, has changed his beingness since getting retired of the hospital. He’s present surviving with Cindy (the formidable Anne Gee Byrd), a overmuch older eccentric achromatic woman, whose beingness revolves astir her cats, some surviving and dead.

Chris, it turns out, has fixed up his vocation arsenic an administrative lawyer for a beingness of good eating and epicurean delicacies. His large sister, Beatrice (Kacie Rogers), and her wife, Jen (Carolyn Ratteray), are shocked to larn that he’s not going backmost to the firm. They’re panicked that he’s losing the thread of his beingness since his assemblage underwent immoderate unspecified “seismic change.”

Jake Borelli, left, and Sheldon D. Brown successful “Eat Me” astatine South Coast Repertory.

(Robert Huskey / South Coast Repertory)

Most nights, Chris likes watching TV with Cindy, who is the other of a foodie. Her refrigerator is afloat of iceberg lettuce, ranch dressing and Diet Coke. She’s much acrophobic with what her cats are eating than what’s connected her ain meal menu.

But Chris has tentatively started dating again. He has arranged to conscionable Stevie (Jake Borelli), a schlubby feline who’s successful a Nintendocore band, astatine an upscale Italian restaurant. The 2 men don’t person overmuch successful common, but that they’re some picking up the pieces of their fractured lives.

Monahon allows scenes to instrumentality spot simultaneously, truthful that portion Chris is connected the day helium is simultaneously reporting his acquisition to Cindy. The fluidity of the method is refreshing, but the occupation is that thing is allowed to build. Fragments of communicative are fed to us, but there’s nary guardant thrust, conscionable a batch of pussyfooting around.

Sheldon D. Brown and Anne Gee Byrd successful South Coast Repertory’s 2026 satellite premiere accumulation of “Eat Me” by Talene Monahon.

(Scott Smeltzer / South Coast Repertory)

Haunting the play is the mysterious fig of The Gourmand (Jeorge Bennett Watson). He appears sometimes arsenic a waiter who ponderously offers Chris much clip to determine what helium wants to bid (“the top acquisition immoderate of america could inquire for”) and sometimes arsenic an progressive fig successful the online Gourmet-Gourmand assemblage who is ever raving astir immoderate gastronomic ecstasy oregon other.

The accumulation feels similar a jumble, and the casting doesn’t assistance benignant retired the mess. The plan team, responding to the work’s fluidity, enjoys keeping america successful the acheronian earlier ambushing america with unasked-for surprises.

“Eat Me” is an unusual but apt title. The archetypal happening that popped into my caput was Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures successful Wonderland,” and the transportation goes beyond temptation and ingestion. Both Monahon and Carroll are penning astir translation of the paradigm-exploding kind.

What happened to Chris is yet explained, much oregon less. The alteration he’s undergone, from being a antheral driven by enactment to 1 wanting to acquisition his capable of sensual pleasures, partially explains his relationship with Cindy. The pairing of Chris’ vulnerability with Cindy’s crustiness evoke aspects of the intergenerational narration successful Samuel D. Hunter’s “Little Bear Ridge Road,” though “Eat Me” lacks Hunter’s intelligence acuity and sustained melodramatic focus.

Cindy whitethorn beryllium the other of a sybarite, but she knows thing astir however quality beings morph implicit time. One day, she shares, she discovered that she had taken connected the signifier of an armadillo. She yet changed backmost but present that she’s getting person to the extremity of her life, she hopes she volition go nutrient for her cats, frankincense transforming erstwhile again into an animal.

We’re not precisely successful wonderland but we’re successful surreal territory each the aforesaid successful a play that spins ideas not truthful overmuch to delight an assemblage arsenic to escaped up an adventurous dramatist whose caller benignant has emerged prematurely from its chrysalis.