In CLYDE’S, a stirring new play from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage and her frequent collaborator, director Kate Whoriskey (Ruined, Sweat), a truck stop sandwich shop offers its formerly incarcerated kitchen staff a shot at redemption. Even as the shop’s callous owner tries to keep them under her thumb, the staff members are given purpose and permission to dream by their shared quest to create the perfect sandwich. You’ll want a seat at the table for this funny, moving, and urgent play. It’s an example of Nottage’s “genius for bringing politically charged themes to life by embodying them in ordinary characters living ordinary lives” (The Wall Street Journal).
The full creative team for Clyde’s includes scenic design by Takeshi Kata, costume design by Jennifer Moeller, lighting design by Christopher Akerlind, sound design by Justin Ellington, original compositions by Justin Hicks and casting by The Telsey Office.
Clyde’s is supported by the Art for Justice Fund, a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and by Terry and Bob Lindsay, with additional support provided by American Express.
Nottage, a Pulitzer winner for the more weighty topical dramas 'Ruined' and 'Sweat,' maintains her interest in illuminating the lives of working class people, but shifts strategies here into broad comedy. The setup has a sitcom quality that's paradoxically inviting, not dissimilar to 'Orange Is the New Black,' for which Aduba won two Emmys; it's easy to imagine stopping by Clyde's every week, with a steady swinging door of short-order cooks working toward rehabilitation. The comedy is situational in both structure and execution, with personalities, incidents and drool-worthy sandwich descriptions making up a bulk of its substance.
'We have what we need. So, let's cook.' And cook they do, bouncing off each other's rhythms like an expert jazz combo. Jones is a model of soulful grace, and Kara Young and Reza Salazar bring charm and humor to their roles as, respectively, the young mother of a disabled child and a recovering addict with a romantic streak; Edmund Donovan is terrific as a laconic newcomer, tense with guilt and shame, whose racist tattoos testify to a past he can't escape. (Not since Adam Driver has an actor risen so swiftly through the ranks on the strength of troubled tenderness.) But the wonderful Aduba, in her first starring Broadway role, has the plummiest role; she cuts through Clyde's like a serrated knife. The stage is her sandwich, and she slathers it with relish.
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