‘Clyde’s’ cooks up delicious drama at the Ensemble Theatre
Hell hath no fury like Clyde, the looming, haranguing, dark-spirited force of nature at the core of Lynn Nottage’s ribald 2021 play called, bluntly and fittingly, “Clyde’s.” (It’s her world, we’re just living in it.)
As played by an indomitable Michelle Elaine in the Ensemble Theatre’s new production, she lords over her ex-convict employees at the Pennsylvania truck stop diner that bears her name, sapping their dreams, crushing their collective will and throwing in a little sexual harassment for good measure. This is a showstopping performance from Elaine: brassy, a little terrifying and hauntingly funny. In a production full of strong performances, she draws every eye in the Ensemble’s intimate house every time she blows onto the stage with hurricane force.
At first blush, “Clyde’s” sounds like a tale of inspiration, and it has a little of that. Oh, how nice, one of those restaurants that makes a point of hiring the recently incarcerated. But Clyde, who also did time, brings them in so she can knock them down. Letitia (Krystle Liggins), Montrellus (Timothy Eric), Rafael (Michael Leonel Sifuentes) and newcomer Jason (Wesley Whitson) make sandwiches that have the truckers lining up down the highway, and they pass their downtime dreaming up the perfect ingredients to put between two slices of bread. For them, the ideal sandwich is a means of self-actualization.
None of which moves Clyde one iota. “Don’t disrespect me by having aspirations,” she snarls at one point. But they can’t help it. They’ve been behind bars, for reasons ranging from robbing a pharmacy (Letitia) to sticking up a bank with a BB gun (Rafael). Now they want to live, as much as they can, anyway.
“Clyde’s” isn’t so much a story as a series of vivid impressions based in character and a meditation on what it might mean to be free. Clyde isn’t just a restaurateur; she’s also a jailer of sorts, giving her inmates hell in the guise of opportunity. Every time she takes the stage, she’s decked out in a dress more outrageous than the last, accentuated by heels that let her literally tower over her charges.
“She actually might be the devil,” exclaims Jason after a particularly aggressive round of abuse (an idea that takes unnecessarily literal form later in the production). Nevertheless, they persist, filling the kitchen set with verbal and physical energy; like the hit TV series “The Bear,” “Clyde’s” harnesses the fuel of a kitchen rife with drama and, despite Clyde’s wishes, aspiration.
Music plays a big part as well, from the soft gong that accompanies a dimming of the lights when the mystical/philosophical Montrellus unleashes one of his killer sandwich ideas, to the recorded tracks that comment on the action (John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things”; Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”). Director Shirley Jo Finney and the cast mix tight rhythms with a freeflowing physicality, embodied best by Sifuentes’ Rafael, who likes to move his hips when he makes a sandwich. They’re all united in a sort of purgatory, even Clyde, although she generally seems like she’d be more comfortable somewhere lower down.