Clyde’s at Boise Contemporary Theater

Or: Scorch marks and the Holy Sandwich

One certainty, you will leave this play hungry. Even from the first moment an audience settles into the Red Seats of BCT, the argument that drives Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s (as well as its most poetic draw) lays before you. A perfect sandwich (provided by Don and Charly’s on 10th street) sits hallowed in a spotlight beam set in the middle of Erin Davidson’s remarkably evocative set: a hellish dinner kitchen, smeared with handprints and scorched with flame.

This is the eponymous Clyde’s an out of the way sandwich shop, financed by some powerful men from The Underworld, and a shrine to the mediocre and the broken hearted. The kitchen staff, all formerly incarcerated, strive to fulfill the endless orders and get their lives together. Tish (Shonda Royall), Rafael (Eddie Maldonado) and Jason (David Kepner, who appeared in last season’s Sweat in the same role, a kind of Nottage Extended Universe) are caught in a morality play between saintly Montrellous (Roosevelt Watts) a cook in search of the perfect sandwich (“The most democratic of all foods” he recites “Two slices of bread and in-between them you can put anything you want.”) and Clyde (Yolanda London), who seems like the distillation of very horrible boss, reveling in her indifference, the embodiment of all the world’s cruelties and callousness in high heels and leopard print.

The difficulty of putting on Clyde’s is that it is a morality play, and while it is well constructed, fun and funny morality play it is a good deal simpler than the staggering problems of Nottage’s other works like Sweat or Ruined. The playwright writes in monologues, the characters stories stacked atop and around each other, building a structure greater than itself. This time though, the human crackle and dialog, though very much present, doesn’t quite fill all the cracks and lets the wind whistle through. Each character is treated to a lilac light-gel of Truth to tell their core story, how they were caught up and spat out by the prison system. It’s an old but effective theatrical trick but its important to take note of what is said when the light of Truth is no longer on them.

The play truly shines, in Nottage’s words and in the hands of the actors, in the small moments of dreams and joys of the characters. This is largely based around food (I have rarely seen a show use food so well, every time the perfect sandwich is dreamed up it leads in the eyes and mouths of the cast, and every time a morsel is condemned to the the refuse bin a groan arose from the audience). It is most ably sparked between the friendship of Tish and Rafael, two opinionated clowns trying endlessly to make each other laugh. Royall and Maldonado work together, their energy bouncing back and forth, continually setting each other up for a comedic Alley Oop, and leaving, refreshingly open-ended the question of whether their characters might be something more to each other.

Be warned, this is a long show and feels it, one of those endless shifts in the burning buzzing world of food service, punctuated by the sweet air of breaks and sustained by camaraderie. It requires attention and if leaves one hungry it is not just because of the dreamed up sandwiches. It also inspires a hunger for goodness, for integrity, for something to believe and bite in to; something that Clyde’s heartily provides.