(The pyrotechnics are by J&M Special Effects.) 40 N. 2nd Street They are caught up in some way or another by the forces of history, shaped by the confluence of race, class and gender. And then they are able to move to a new place.. Review: Clyde's at Ensemble Theatre | Houston Press Jason (Edmund Donovan) is the new guy, initially quiet and sullen, marked up with white-supremacist tattoos. 2004: Nottage follows up her success with, Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine, 2008: After several years of research, Nottage wins her first Pulitzer for, 2011: Nottage goes for bright, nuanced, comedy with. At Studio Theatre, Lynn Nottage's 'Clyde's' serves up hope and humor Review by Celia Wren March 8, 2023 at 1:34 p.m. EST From left: Brandon Ocasio, Dee Dee Batteast and Lamont Thompson in. Clyde's on Broadway Is a Comedic Feast With a Serious Point Lynn Nottage's 'Clyde's' Is the Most-Staged Play in America An annual survey, suspended during the pandemic, resumes and finds theaters nationally doing fewer shows and torn between. (It was originally called Floyds until George Floyd was murdered.) This person who is deeply compassionate and mindful and invested in community.. endobj Second Stage Theater's production of Lynn Nottage's new play CLYDE'S opens tonight, Tuesday November 23, 2021, at Second Stage's Broadway home, the Hayes Theater (240 W 44th Street at 8th Avenue). Be the first to know about productions, special events, promotions, and everything happening at TO! She is bent on making the crew miserable, while hopping all over each other to answer her commands. Trouble in Mind is pessimistic about the structures that underpin the entertainment industry, but it is bullish about the possibilities of earnest artistic pursuit. Hes often late and doesnt understand the need for any extra effort to make Clydes diner any more successful. Update: After publishing its survey results on Friday, American Theater magazine amended its lists to reflect new information. Seductive. It's useful to have that other. Single Tickets Gain full access to show guides, character breakdowns, auditions, monologues and more! And these distractions and a ghosted date with Letitia cause him to fall off the wagon and begin using drugs again. BOX OFFICE 202.332.3300ADMINISTRATION 202.232.7267DONATIONS 202.919.3712, MAIN 1501 14th Street NWWashington, DC 20005, MAILING ADDRESSPO Box 73102Washington, DC 20056, BOX OFFICE HOURSMondays ClosedTuesday Thursday, Noon 6:00pm (until 6:30pm when performance scheduled)Friday, Noon 6:00pm (until 7:00pm when performance scheduled)Saturday, Noon 7:00pm (performance days only)Sunday, Noon 6:00pm (performance days only), ARTISTIC DIRECTOR David MuseEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Rebecca Ende Lichtenberg, 1993: Lynn Nottage makes her professional debut with the Actors. Over Zoom from London, where shes in previews for her new project, The Secret Life of Bees, she draws me warmly into conversation. She leans beautifully into the sweetness of the cooks but also, bending the other way, into the sourness of Clyde, for whom Nottage has written great zingers. Even if you dont know Sweat, though, Clydes may slightly cloy. As the day wears on, Clyde is constantly ringing the bell for sandwich orders to be taken, as she periodically flirts with Jason while wearing suggestive clothing with matching boots. A cultural guide to going out and loving your city. CLYDE'S | By Lynn Nottage - YouTube Dramatists Play Service, Inc. People who have seen Sweat will recognize him as one of the perpetrators of a heinous attack on a Colombian American busboy at the climax of that play, also set in Reading. On a long stretch of highway, in the middle of here and there, Clydes truck stop diner sizzles with the aroma of possibility and redemption.Between slinging grilled cheese and tuna melts, the formerly incarcerated kitchen staff at Clydes dream of creating the perfect recipe. In this case the shortcuts were totally worth it; that Clydes is a comedy does not mean it doesnt have tragedy baked in. Shes like an ungenerous sketch-comedy depiction of a woman we want to meet, whom Aduba could, I think, play well: wrathful and dangerous, yes, but welling up and bubbling over with a pastand some drastic actionto justify it. Because they were formerly incarcerated, they didnt have access to many things that we take for granted., A Lynn Nottage play often makes use of a liminal space. Mass Market Paperback. In Lynn Nottages new play, characters life stories come between slapstick riffs on sandwich-making; Alice Childresss 1955 play makes its muchbelated Broadway dbut. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. If it aint brown or gray, it can be fried. Fire up the skillet. I became very interested in the ways that economic stagnation was reshaping the American narrative, she says. Lynn Nottage's 'Clyde's' Is the Most-Staged Play in America CLYDES is a sweet and salty new Broadway comedy from Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (Sweat). Young, left, plays Tish who stole some oxy and addy to sell on the side. And Salazar, as Rafael, held up a bank to buy his girlfriend a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Aduba, far left, as the shady restaurant proprietor Clyde, and her cooks, from left: Reza Salazar, Kara Young, Jones and Edmund Donovan. Funny, moving, and urgent, Clyde's shows Lynn Nottage's "genius for bringing politically charged themes to life by embodying them in ordinary characters living ordinary lives" (The Wall Street Journal). And I wanted to find a city that was a microcosm of what was happening in the United States.. Despite his tats and defenses, Jason is a puppy, fully domesticated before the play is half over. 2008: After several years of research, Nottage wins her first Pulitzer for Ruined (Goodman Theatre), a reimagining of Brechts Mother Courage and Her Children set in a Congolese bar. She speaks about the idea of theatre as a form of archive, an idea she credits to the late George Bass, a teacher who was an influence at Brown University. Nottage wrote Clyde's at roughly the same time she was writing her Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat, and this play's Jason is also that play's Jason. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Purchase a subscription for the 2023/24 Season. Among those staging the play are the Arden Theater Company in Philadelphia, the Arkansas Repertory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Center Theater Group in Los Angeles and TheaterWorks Hartford. Clyde- Late 30's - 50's. Black. Though it ultimately rejects the Greek model, it is still about gods and mortals. My daughter was born and then my mother died, and it shifted my notion of what and who I wanted to write about, she says. Though its still about dark things, including prison, drugs, homelessness and poverty, it somehow turns them into bright comedy. An annual survey, suspended during the pandemic, resumes and finds theaters nationally doing fewer shows and torn between escapism and ambition. People are there for short periods of time to seek sustenance and then they move on. . Still, the most interesting people, onstage and in our lives, hold on to a whiff of mystery. 2022 The Crusader News Group | Empowered by, Sen. Eddie Melton releases economic development plan; SB 434 headed to governors desk, Illinois Techs Institute of Design and UChicago Medicines innovation unit sign deal to innovate healthcare delivery, Lakeshore Public Media to cover NWI Primary, Black aldermen who endorsed Vallas get $236K in campaign donations. Crumbs from the Table of Joy and Other Plays: Nottage, Lynn Clyde is a foul-mouthed, scrappy ex-con with an attitude that makes it easy for her to demean and taunt her employeesshe views them as being nobodies because all have done prison time. 2015: Sweat, a play about economic downturn in Reading, PA, debuts at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; two years later, the play goes on to win Nottage her second Pulitzer. And Jason is new to the diner and not trusted by the others, because he obviously has tattoos that are believed to be gang tributes. She rings a bell when new orders come in, appearing at the window to the kitchen all of a sudden, like a poltergeist at the climax of a horror flick. the Michael Jackson jukebox musical. a memory play about teenagers struggling to cope with their mothers death. Lynn Nottages Clydes Is the Most-Staged Play in America, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/theater/most-popular-plays-playwrights.html. That same year, Second Stage also premieres Crumbs from the Table of Joy, a memory play about teenagers struggling to cope with their mothers death. Uzo Aduba is one of my favorite televisual performers of recent yearsas Suzanne (Crazy Eyes) Warren in Netflixs Orange Is the New Black, and as the therapist Brooke Taylor in the new season of HBOs In Treatmentlargely because she holds within her characters, and gradually reveals, many layers of tenderness and brokenness, irrationality and explosive pain. Rafael (Reza Salazar) held up a bank but (a) with a BB gun, and (b) only because he wanted to buy his girlfriend a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. 1 0 obj Lynn Nottages new play, Clydes, directed by Kate Whoriskey (at the Helen Hayes), about the staff of a run-down sandwich joint at a truck stop, takes a stark either-or stance regarding the lives of its characters. In the intervening years, she has become one of America's most renowned playwrights, with multiple shows on Broadway (sometimes concurrently), two Pulitzer prizes, and a resume that includes opera, TV, and the multi-media site-specific installation This is Reading. Clyde toys with angry fear when her troubles come up, but she never revisits it. We dont at first get the story of how Montrellous (Ron Cephas Jones) wound up behind bars, but he is so saintly that Letitia, called Tish, believes it must have been elective. Playwright Lynn Nottage has never looked far for a source of dramatic value. Clyde's | Huntington Theatre Company In Kate Whoriskeys brisk and thoroughly satisfying production for Second Stage Theater, we learn that, unlike Oedipus and his mom, people who may have little else nevertheless have choices. We are making plans to ensure the health and safety of our audiences, artists, and staff. endobj View our Health and Safety Plan which follows the affair between Queen Marie-Therese and Nabo, her African servant. That same year, Second Stage also premieres. By putting them into a character whose goal is in fact to educate, and by blowing them up into amusing overstatements, she keeps the play itself from becoming gassy. Lynn Nottage has sometimes been one of them. a runaway hit exploring 70 years in the life of a (fictional) Hollywood starlet. Nottage, in an email, said she was pleased the play was finding an audience. vi|IgOUZi3#Q_`njK2YO1t0)lxxQeUX./OmrI@|2eVp&wC>% 8@c  !8nvlDux?Q8p2;wpn|?4~!2VL q'pq&+yW ]o f "}Dp\ ^F The puzzle of someones bearing and outward presentation gives way to the collection of secrets and fears and family history that make upand, over time, help to explainthat person. 'Clyde's' Review: Sometimes a Hero Is More Than Just a Sandwich It also helps that Takeshi Katas cleverly expanding set, lit for comedy by Christopher Akerlind, allows Whoriskey to hit the ground running and barely pause for 95 minutes. 1993: Lynn Nottage makes her professional debut with the Actors ' Theatre of Louisville's production of Poof, a one-act comedy about a woman whose abusive husband spontaneously combusts. At the 2022 Tonys, Nottage is nominated for both Clydes and MJ. "A truck-stop diner is a space of . Lynn Nottage's 'Clyde's' brings comic force to a story of those $3X2),sDzGX$,W\lX>-;+I+w!^F$^Y)|)CS.fxths There were factories and a whole infrastructure revolved around supporting people. New York, NY, Escape To Margaritaville 2021: Nottage writes the book for MJ, the Michael Jackson jukebox musical. The Goodman is located at 170 N. Dearborn St. Elaine Hegwood Bowen, M.S.J., is the Entertainment Editor for the Chicago Crusader. Directions and Parking 2 0 obj Lynn Nottage has sometimes been one of them. She is a professor of Playwriting at Columbia University. They were all storytellers. Everybodys entitled to a little privacy. boxofficer@ardentheatre.org. 2017: With longtime director Kate Whoriskey and her husband, the filmmaker Tony Gerber, Nottage pilots, a site-specific piece designed to run in the same Pennsylvania town where she set. In yet another, a pro forma (but totally heartwarming) romance buds between two of the characters. Notably, though composers are not tracked by the survey, work with songs by Stephen Sondheim is experiencing a spike in popularity since his death last year, with at least 19 productions planned around the country. Creating the perfect sandwich is the shared quest of the formerly incarcerated kitchen staff of Clyde's, a truck stop cafe. CLYDE'S by Lynn Nottage Under the watchful eye of the titular character, Clyde's follows the kitchen staff of a truck stop in a small PA town. ee#{Jn`j}$O3$x;$3$22)C"3c\lljI%&EI>rxyY^NQ31(Oi9{lPe,yuL*wfIsUQX_8}%g`Mx*fgd0YZ[W^Wr@;t Sign up today to unlock amazing theatre resources and opportunities. The employees of Clyde's an unassuming caf sitting on a long stretch of road in Pennsylvania, and the name of Lynn Nottage's new play periodically indulge in a whimsical activity.