Ross Zentner
Three persons in a restaurant kitchen stage set.
Sean Langenecker, center, is a particular standout as Jason. Nadja Simmonds, left, plays Tish and Ronald Román-Meléndez is Rafael in Forward Theater's production of 'Clyde's.'
Clyde’s is a play that wants you to love it at every turn. The 2021 comedy by Lynn Nottage was the most produced play in the U.S. in 2022, according to stats compiled by American Theatre magazine, and the second most produced play this year. Nottage was the most produced playwright for both years. So clearly, there is love. Nottage is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama, for Ruined in 2009 and Sweat in 2017, both more serious dramas, but featuring some of the same issues as Clyde’s.
The action takes place in a truck stop diner kitchen in Berks County, Pennsylvania. The titular Clyde (Dana Pellebon) is the owner — and apparently the only server — of the restaurant. She appears in the kitchen frequently to place and pick up orders and reprimand her staff, all while dressed in a series of sexy dresses and killer shoes that don’t match up with the job she’s doing. (Neither does her rather sedate pace.)
Clyde, seemingly doing a good thing by hiring formerly incarcerated felons to work in the diner, actually preys on them. Since they can’t easily find employment elsewhere, she has free rein to be as mean, abusive and exploitative as she wants. At any moment I expected her to twirl her mustache and tie someone to a train track — she’s that kind of villain.
Opposite Clyde is the saintly Montrellus (Dimonte Henning), the heart of the kitchen and a man of Zenlike patience. Montrellus inspires the other kitchen staff; their favorite pastime is dreaming up ever more inventive sandwiches, which offers both a goal to aspire to — the complex sandwiches symbolize a better life — and relief from the monotony of fixing ham on white bread. Joining him in the kitchen are the exuberant bank robber Rafael (Ronald Román-Meléndez), who’s a hopeless romantic, and Tish (Nadja Simmonds), a stressed single mother with a special needs child and an addict ex-boyfriend.
Into the mix drops Jason (Sean Langenecker), whose white supremecist tattoos put the others immediately on their guard. But Jason, too, develops into a willing dreamer, and turns out to have those tattoos due to prison self-preservation. Langenecker is particularly good at combining in Jason a sense of potential danger with a believable, moving softer side.
On the surface, food is at the heart of the transformations at Clyde’s. The dream sandwiches are the characters’ creative outlet. But the sandwiches are more than that: “The sandwich is your pulpit, it’s where you preach the gospel of good eating,” says Rafael. Clyde isn’t having any of it: “That bitch-ass sandwich ain’t gonna change a damn thing.” And it does appear that her staff is trapped at Clyde’s by lack of other opportunities.
It’s Montrellus who creates the kitchen community and inspires the staff to move beyond it. It’s hard to take seriously his more fanciful sermons, like one about taking the consumer on a journey with each bite, or his efforts to “achieve oneness with the sandwich,” and it’s possible Nottage means these to be gently tongue-in-cheek, but regardless, Henning’s performance makes these nuggets amusing as well as inspiring.
Scenic designer Keith Pitts’ set is quite a faithful commercial kitchen reproduction; Jason Fassl’s lighting suggests that there is a metaphorical reading to the diner kitchen too, although that only becomes clear at the end of the play. More visual cues earlier could amp this intriguing element of Nottage’s script.
Clyde’s is a comedy that at times threatens to turn tragic. As it is, dramatic turns are scattered throughout, but the scaffolding of the play — the ever more villainous Clyde attacking her ever more appealing staff — tends to make the drama a bit of a see-saw instead of an arc. Fortunately Forward’s cast goes a long way toward giving the audience a taste of something deeper.
