(L to R) Ryan Czerwonko; Sydney Lolita Cusic; & Xavier Reyes in CLYDE's. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.
For a discouraging piece of advice, it’s hard to beat this one: “Don’t get high on hope.”
The title character in “Clyde’s,” now on stage at the George Street Playhouse, lays that on her employees at a truck-stop diner, and she counts on them to accept it, or else she’s in trouble.
“Clyde’s,” the work of double-Pulitzer winner Lynn Nottage, concerns ex-convicts who work in the kitchen at this greasy spoon.
None of them—Rafael, Letitia, Montrellous, or newly arrived Jason—are hardened criminals, but they all have done time for breaking the law out of foolishness, passion, desperation, or—in one case—heroism. And like so many men and women released from prison, they wear a stigma that impedes their way back into society.
Clyde, a tough customer and herself an ex-con, takes advantage of their plight by constantly degrading them and threatening them with bodily harm and with false accusations that would land them back in stir. Clyde is in debt to some disreputable characters, and she depends on the bottom line at this diner to keep them at bay.
The counterpoint in the kitchen is Montrellous, who experiments with artisan sandwiches and encourages the obdurate Clyde to attract a wider, more well-heeled clientele by offering more than melted cheese on Wonder Bread—say, curried quail-egg salad with mint on oven-fresh cranberry pecan multigrain bread.
More than that, Montrellous encourages his co-workers to imagine their own original sandwich constructions and to use that experience to leave the prison mentality behind.
“Cuz you left prison don’t mean outta prison,” he tells his co-workers. “But remember, everything we do here is to escape that mentality. This kitchen, these ingredients, these are our tools. We have what we need. So, let’s cook.”
(L to R) Sydney Lolita Cusic & Darlene Hope in CLYDE's. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.
George Street recruited a powerful ensemble to perform this play, which deftly uses comedy to expose chronic problems: the failure of the “corrections system” to correct anything and the reluctance of the world at large to regard former inmates with anything but suspicion.
Darlene Hope is the larger-than-life Clyde, stomping into the kitchen in a series of gaudy skin-tight outfits by designer Cheyenne Sykes. Trying to manage her staff with alternating brutality and manipulation, Hope is hilarious in her reactions to their dreamy notions, getting the most out of lines like, “Did you just use the word ‘garnish’”?
Gabriel Lawrence as Montrellous meets the challenge of making this shaman-like character believable, no matter how unlikely he may seem in this grim environment.
Sydney Lolita Cusic ably presents Letitia with a conflicting mixture of joy, defensiveness, and despair.
Xavier Reyes is a charmer as Rafael, dancing around the kitchen, romancing Letitia, and letting his emotions flow freely.
(L to R) Xavier Reyes & Sydney Lolita Cusic in CLYDE's. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.
Ryan Czerwonko skillfully plays Jason as the inscrutable member of this team, a newcomer to the kitchen who only gradually opens up to personal interaction and sandwich innovation.
“Clyde’s” is presented without an intermission and with a series of what the playwright calls “transitions” in which the stage is rarely without an actor. Under Melissa Maxwell’s direction, the action is quick-paced and fluid as the characters’ self-awareness evolves.
The story is told in kitchen designed by Riw Rakkulchon that is so accurately detailed that it is almost a character in itself.
“Clyde’s,” at George Street through February 19, is masterful storytelling that amuses an audience while showing them the impact neglect and injustice can have on people whose potential is greater than their mistakes.
The company of CLYDE's. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.
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