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The sandwich shop in Lynn NottagesClydesisnt just a sandwich shop.
But at crucial moments, this reality bleeds and shifts.
Sometimes shafts of divine light pierce the ceiling; other times, blazing hellfire flashes up through the floor.
(Christopher Akerlind did the lighting design.)
Other realms seem strangely close at hand.
The teetering quality isnt just the too-many-objects-in-a-small-space feeling of an American commercial kitchen, its something existential.
On its surface,Clydesis a comic drama about surviving a dreadful boss.
(Like life, amirite?)
Clyde herself is a bully.
Thissandwich isnt Wonder Bread its awonder.
(When he gestures to it, angels sing.)
She laughs and stabs her cigarette at him.
Then the cigarette explodes in orange flame.
A little slice of hell has leaked into the purgatorial kitchen.
This is true spiritually and literally too: The people who work at Clydes cant leave.
Nottage touches it lightly, but being inside has marked them all some literally.
Jason, for instance, slinks into the kitchen covered with white-supremacist prison tattoos.
Thats because theres a bodhisattva among them.
We know Jason has changed when he designs a steak sandwich out loud.
On a cheddar biscuit?
he asks, hesitantly.
He imagines his own pleasure.
He imagines someone elses pleasure.
Then he slams his hand down.
Its useful to have that other drama in your mind as you watchClydes.
(If you missed it when it came to Broadway in 2017, you canread it!)
Many of the things that usually drive a play are absent inClydes.
These characters arent heading for dramatic resolution.
Theyre aiming for a place, reached via sensual delight, of reconnection and reawakening.
Nottage isnt the only one writing about purgatory this week.
(The set is an infinite green field under a row of white arches.)
Its so stressful being Black, he says, and not in some hypothetical way.
The second half of the lyrical fever dream consists of a meeting in the green field.
When they realize their connections some are related, all are dead they attempt to find comfort.
They all died before liberation, but he, at least, has found a measure of it.
When the Man joins them, they have learned enough from each other to give him strength as well.
We were here before the noose, they say.
If he can hear them, he might yet escape it.
On the first page of the script, Mansa Ra calls the play autobiographical, which is devastating.
Fare ye well, they sing, Ill meet you on the other shore.
Mansa Ra, on the other hand, invites you into limbo with him.
You emerge from the show as if youre leaving his mind.
Clydesis at the Hayes Theater through January 16.
In the Southern Breezeis at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater until December 12.
