CHARLOTTE, NC – Over a lazy Duke Ellington piano riff that becomes indelible almost as soon as you hear it, John Coltrane layers on the melody of “In a Sentimental Mood,” recorded 62 Septembers ago. Although we’re in a kitchen at a truck stop that doesn’t look nearly that old, somewhere along the highway in Berks County PA, it’s a fitting intro to the new BNS production of Clyde’s. Along with the mean and sassy owner of this diner, Clyde, we meet her star employee, the zen-like Montrellous, also described by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage as “the John Coltrane of sandwich making.”
Nottage’s newest comedy-drama originally premiered in Minneapolis as Floyd’s in 2019, less than a full year before George Floyd was killed by local police – so it was prudent to change the title before the Broadway opening in 2021. Yet a police state haze still hovers over the action, since all the employees at Clyde’s are ex-convicts or parolees, including the owner. Clyde is not a criminal now, but something or someone has clearly hardened her. Montrellous believes that Clyde’s could be a smashing success if it served up extraordinary sandwiches. She wants to stick to basics, lay low, keep a low profile, and lower her costs on the ingredients her drones drop between two slices of bread.
Limiting ourselves on food analogies, let’s say Clyde is one tough cookie, tightly wound to match the tight-fitting outfits costume designer Aneesah Taylor tailored for her. You do not smile around Clyde, Montrellous warns newbie Jason, a recent parolee. He doesn’t listen. To his distress, he will learn the hard way that Clyde is the Captain Bligh or Queeg aboard this ship. Ah, but there is deeper wickedness to this boss: there is a Jezebel gene in her DNA, for Clyde is a toxic temptress. On a couple of occasions, the owner’s forays into her kitchen reminded me of Curley’s luscious wife sashaying among the farmhands in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
The mice here mostly get to play when the boss isn’t peeping through the pickup station, hanging a barely legible order on a little carousel, and banging a bell. Director Dee Abdullah had her kitchen staff reveling in those moments when they weren’t wrapped up in a food prep frenzy. For Montrellous, sandwich making should never be drudgery. It is more like a mission, a calling, a crusade, an artform…or a lifelong quest for the perfect sandwich. Suffering and anger can seep into the food you make.
This ministry is not for Montrellous exclusively. When the pace in the kitchen slackens, all four workers lean over their prep stations and take turns chanting the ingredients of sandwiches never built before, swooning collectively over their imaginary deliciousness. In these moments, the kitchen is more like a studio or a writers’ room as the creators brainstorm ideas. And when the coast is really clear, Montrellous reaches into a low cabinet upstage center and extracts his latest masterwork, placing it reverently in the exact middle of the three prep stations. Since James Duke’s’ lighting design accentuated the gleam of the Saran wrap around Montrellous’ newborn brainchild, the radiance turned Clyde’s kitchen into a holy temple of sorts. Epicures looking at the three stations centerstage at the Parr Center can be excused if they’re reminded of the Last Supper by Jennifer O’Kelly‘s set design.
With this sacred imagery in mind, it’s hardly surprising that Montrellous’s precepts begin to transcend food preparation as we get to know more about him and about Clyde, Jason, slicer-and-dicer Letitia, and the man with the pans at the stove, Rafael. As much as Montrellous wants to convince Clyde to be more enterprising and adventurous – and less dogmatic and stingy – the adoring and adorable Rafael wants Letitia, forever stressed by her infant and her ex, to just give him a chance. Really, this romantic subplot occupies more space and time than the overarching struggle between Clyde and Montrellous, so we don’t think we’re watching supporting players when we see Lisandro D. Caceres-Zelaya in action as Rafael propositioning and wooing Toi Aquila R.J. as Letitia.
“Not enough salt, the flavor doesn’t come out; too much salt, it’s inedible,” Montrellous pronounces. Both women, taught by their past experiences, fend off new ideas and intimacies, fearing all because they’ve had too much before. Both are skeptical that being asked out could be motivated by any other reason than sexual exploitation, whether tender or forceful. Fortifying her resistance to anything Montrellous creates, Dominica Ivey as Clyde turned down every simple invitation to give it a taste. She wielded her ever-present cigarette like a dagger, and her every exit was a devastating kiss-off, somewhat comical because she was so decisive. You began to wonder whether Ivy had any empathy for her ex-cons: maybe Clyde hires them because they can be bought cheaply.
To be sure, Ivy can string any male along in her wanton mode, but it’s Aquila as Letitia who gave off the most bipolar vibes. When she wasn’t sullenly brooding or crazily hacking lettuce as if she were Lizzie Borden, Aquila was shaking some fine booty and boogying, reminding us of the charisma she radiated as Eartha Kitt last September. We have no difficulty understanding what Rafael sees in her, and Caceres-Zelaya lit up the stage with his sunny energy, evoking for me the irrepressible verve of Usnavy in Lin Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights.
When he isn’t presiding over the sacrament of sandwich making – and his apostles’ efforts to reach his lofty level – Zach Humphrey as Montrellous was largely a peacemaker. He intervened with calm authority when Clyde and Jason came close to blows, and he was a guiding light for both Letitia and Rafael as they gravitated toward one another. “Trust your ingredients,” he sagely says more than once. Everyone is different. People’s possibilities are as infinite as the varieties of sandwiches you can imagine.
Making his professional debut, Anthony Tronzo as Jason presented special challenges that audience members might struggle with, with the tats on his face and his spewing of barbarity and hatred. Onstage, the tats are chiefly repellent to Letitia, but since Jason doesn’t speak much at first, we also need to delve beyond skin depth to grasp what he’s all about. Nottage gives each of the kitchen workers a juicy monologue to reveal what’s inside and in their rearview mirrors, and we’ll likely remember Tronzo’s nearly as vividly as Humphrey’s. But an unspoken maxim sprung to mind as Duke’s lighting finally sanctified Clyde in her memorable epiphany. There’s a wonderful little saying from the Psalms of David that I first learned from a book title by Denise Levertov: O Taste And See. At times the lesson is merely culinary. But ultimately, the message is experiential, about adopting an empirical attitude instead of hardening our prejudices. Above all, it’s an injunction to fully live our lives.
BNS Productions’ Clyde’s continues at the Parr Center at Central Piedmont Community College through September 15.
