And no wonder.
Her two Pulitzer Prizes are for works in which the world and its people are trapped in an abusive relationship.
In Kate Whoriskey’s 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.
In the kitchen of the truck stop diner that gives the play its title, the cooks making the sandwiches have all served time.
In any case, like the others, he has paid the price, and keeps paying it.
Popping up like a demon in a small window between the front and the back of the restaurant, she roars orders and insults; when she emerges, in full glory, among her minions, it is only to exert her fearful, foul-mouthed dominance.
Into this uncomfortable equilibrium comes Jason At first it seems that Jason’s integration into the kitchen will form the story’s spine: Tish quickly warns him that she knows all about “breaking wild white horses.” But it turns out to be less of a spine than a rib.
If Nottage’s aim was to keep “Clyde’s” a comedy, even one about redemption, Jason had to be rebuilt; in the writing though not the performance — Donovan faultlessly negotiates the contradictions — the seams sometimes show.
Tish, in Walker’s superb performance, is a smart, sharp, heavily defended kitten; Rafael, a huggable romantic; Montrellous, an impeccably kind sage — “like a Buddha,” Rafael says, “if he’d grown up in the hood.” Jones fulfills that description perfectly, correcting for the character’s Zen imperturbability with subtle dashes of pain and sacrifice.
And the series of fantastical sandwiches Montrellous creates, inspiring the others to make their own as a way of dreaming big, threatens to convert from a leitmotif into an annoyance when it is forced to bear too much meaning.
When Montrellous says that sandwiches like his grilled halloumi on home-baked herb focaccia are “the most democratic of all foods” — or that “this sandwich is my freedom” — we see something about his personality, not just the playwright waving semaphore flags.
It also helps that Takeshi Kata’s cleverly expanding set, lit for comedy by Christopher Akerlind, allows Whoriskey to hit the ground running and barely pause for 95 minutes.
In this case the shortcuts were totally worth it; that “Clyde’s” is a comedy does not mean it doesn’t have tragedy baked in.
That they discover the power of that imagination in the most unlikely way, by making food, is what makes the play funny.