STAGE WEST: "The Recipe" at La Jolla Playhouse

Norbert Leo Butz and Christina Kirk in "The Recipe."                                             Photo by Rich Soublet II

            No less than Julia Child herself would appreciate the importance of having the right ingredients.
            “The Recipe,” a world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse, has them:
            A playwright, Claudia Shear, who crafted a script based on Bob Spitz’s book “Dearie,” that paints a vivid portrait of the younger Julia Child that not many know about and who was not depicted in the 2009 film “Julie and Julia.”
            A director, Lisa Peterson, at the helm of a brisk, stylish and altogether charming production which closes the Playhouse’s 2025-’26 season.
            Two leads, Christina Kirk as Child and Norbert Leo Butz as her husband Paul, who are irresistible and who enjoy great chemistry onstage. I don’t know what Julia Child was like in real life, but I’d like to think she was very much the woman portrayed by Kirk: independent-minded, fun-loving, stubborn, focused and oh so human in her self-doubts, self-deprecation and frustrations.
            The presentation of “The Recipe” in the Playhouse’s Potiker Theatre is also part of its effectiveness and its appeal. Rachel Hauck’s movable set pieces variously evoke a Smith College dorm room, the swelter of Ceylon, the stuffiness of a conservative Pasadena home and the bon vivant sophistication and adventure of Paris. The coup de grace is the fabulous working kitchen with its wall of gleaming golden pots and pans hung like treasured art that Paul builds at their home there for Julia. It’s all critical to telling her story of discovering who she is by what she is passionate to do.
            It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a theater audience where one could sense the enjoyment patrons were having on opening night. “The Recipe” comes with its laugh lines and moments of glib humor, and the relationship between Julia and Paul that builds over the course of the story is quietly touching and, like Paris itself, tres romantique.
            The lighter, faster-moving first act of “The Recipe” establishes a 20ish Julia McWilliams unimpressed by Smith College academia but gamely wringing fun out of every situation and personal interaction she can. Her eventual secretarial skills and desire to do what she can for the war effort leads her to the otherworld of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) where those around her consider the 6-foot-2, wholly uninhibited woman from Pasadena a fish out of water. But it’s there that she meets a worldly OSS civil servant and artist named Paul Child. After initially being startled by a personality like Julia’s, he becomes infatuated, and who can blame him? Julia McWilliams is just so damned much fun. Anything goes! Try a little opium? Why not? When she and Child do – and its staging is inspired – all barriers between them fall away. They are destined for a life together (even if Julia’s stern, “I-know-what’s-best-for-MY-daughter” dad, played by Michael Park, tries to prevent it).
            Come Act Two, life in Paris and exposure to restaurants there and their rich, exquisite cuisine ignites the creative spark inside the woman who is now Julia Child: She will cook like these French chefs cook! With her husband’s encouragement she enrolls in the Sorbonne. When that experience ends in disappointment, a defeated Julia is buoyed by meeting through a cooking club Simone Beck (called Simca in “The Recipe”) and through her Louisette Bertholle. Simca (Jill Ambramovitz) and Louise (Saisha Talwar), impressed by Julia’s enthusiasm and sheer audacity, persuade her to work with them on a cookbook.
            This will become the definitive “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”
            There are, in “The Recipe,” flinty personal complications between Julia and her collaborators, and Julia’s marriage to Paul suffers its own stresses. In the second act, we see a Julia unlike the earlier Julia, her devil-may-care overcome by failures and fits of temper and her own insatiable drive to be who she wants to be.
            The wrap-up, the resolution of the pitfalls and conflicts, is tender and intuitive. Julia Child sees the path of her future life and career; it comes with humility, but we know she will carry with her unflagging spirit and joy as she becomes the Julia Child so many remember from “The French Chef” on television.
            If “The Recipe” has any shortcoming, it would be its two-hour, 45-minute length. Even for a play as entertaining as this one, with its likable characters and bright storytelling and jazzy original music by Andre Pluess, it is a little long. One choreographed, non-speaking sequence in the second act showing the three cookbook collaborators busy in the kitchen could be trimmed or even spliced and nothing would be lost. But in trying to envision a shorter iteration of “The Recipe” I quibbled with myself in the trying.
            Some really good dishes take their time to cook. You can’t rush them.
            Kirk and Butz both give outstanding performances. They’re as believable as could be as two people in love with and supportive of each other; and it’s their portrayal of Julia and Paul Child’s ability to embrace life with all its serious crossroads and silly misadventures that make “The Recipe” as delicious and satisfying as it is.
            “The Recipe” runs through March 22 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Sheila & Hughes Potiker Theatre. Limited seats remain available.