Julia Cho's new play Aubergine, a world premiere that also marks the first production in the newly rechristened Peet's Theatre, is a thoughtful and fairly traditional play centered on two essential aspects of life: death, and the pleasures of food. Ray is a chef who lost his mother at a young age, and whose Korean father never cared much about eating, or believed in his son's choice of career.

Now that his father is in his final days, brought home for hospice care, Ray must navigate the strange, extended days and nights of presiding over a deathbed, and, in the process, reconcile himself with an unforgiving man with whom he had little in common.

Ray is played by Tim Kang, whom Mentalist fans will recognize from his role as Kimball Cho, and he gives a stellar performance in this role, which is at turns sarcastic, raw, and devastated.

Into the mix and helping Ray in the grieving process is ex-girlfriend Cornelia (played by Jennifer Lim) and hospice nurse Lucien (the excellent Tyrone Mitchell Henderson), and after a phone call to Korea in which Ray needs Cornelia's help translating his father's native language, they're greeted with the surprise arrival of Ray's Uncle (Joseph Steven Yang), who speaks no English, and who arrives with recipes he wants to feed his brother as his last meal.

The theme of food and cooking is an appropriate one, and food is often a central focus as we face a person's death, and mourn it. And many of the moments around food feel personal and highly specific in their writing — especially a memory of a meal served to Cornelia by Ray when they were first dating, and how he somehow psychically knew her childhood love for mulberries.

But some of the discussion of death and dying feels a bit prosaic, and didactic, like the discoveries of the experience of a death in the family by a young writer for whom the subject matter is brand new. Aubergine assumes a bit too often that this material is new for much of the audience, and the play makes some earnest but naive attempts to explain particulars that don't need explaining for many of us.

The set, designed by Wilson Chin, is aggressive in its plainness, with hospital-beige walls and pale green carpeting across the stage, and ultimately felt like a confusing and depressing choice given how simple much of the staging is.

I was confused, too, by a conceit that seems to imply that Ray has some magical, psychic abilities, which doesn't totally serve the play's message and simply adds an element of surprise.

But the play, and especially Kang's nuanced and confident performance, are worth a look.

Aubergine plays through March 20. Find tickets here, and be sure to ask for half-price tickets if you're under the age of 30.