Jasmine Case and Augusto Bitter in Clyde’s | Photo by Dahlia Katz
Is Clyde’s mediocre writing? From my perspective, yes. Will most general audiences be so unimpressed? Will you, for instance, find it compelling? If you enjoy the punchy, declarative dialogue and heavy-handed messaging of the average American sit-com, you’ll likely find a lot to love in this Canadian Stage production of Lynn Nottage’s comedy. Ex-convicts wrangling with each other and their oppressive circumstances while seeking redemption as they try to make the perfect sandwich in a dingy truck stop restaurant—What a great premise! I just wish it had more nuance and bite.
It’s hard for director Philip Akin and his cast to achieve much subtlety in the Bluma Appel Theatre, where, filling the huge stage, Rachel Forbes’ grimy kitchen set is a little too stylized and sprawling to allow for the sort of convincing interpersonal dynamics the story strives toward. People are just to far away from each other and the walls are too high for me to accept their reality. Though Akin has worked magic in this space before! His production of The Lehman Trilogy, for instance, (a more resonant script and a production not aiming for realism) was emotionally vivid and visually breathtaking.
Those walls have a convincing patina of sweat, smoke and grease, but without any attempt to create the sense of a world outside the windows or even more than a black void through that order window, it feels a bit hollow and dislocated. As Michael Kras’s magic elements offer fancifully intriguing narrative oddities and aspects of the set reveal intentional spatial inconsistencies, I began to realize that we are not meant to take all this quite at face value. The final reveal is a bit muddled though and, for me at least, rather underwhelming.
But I am getting ahead of myself again, so here’s a little context:
Clyde (Sophia Walker) runs a truck stop sandwich shop. She’s a hyper-sexual, domineering, downright cruel tyrant lording over her fellow ex-con employees. Walker has presence for sure, and Nottage has given her some abrasive life truths to undergird her bullying, but it’s all pretty trite. Montrellous (Sterling Jarvis) is her foil—a gentle, patient, cuddly bear of a man who serves as a sort of sage guide to the others, serving up pithy words of wisdom—sandwich-making as metaphor for self-actualization. Rafael (Augusto Bitter), Letitia (Jasmine Case) and Jason (Johnathan Sousa) flesh out the ensemble with their own distinct deals. Everyone is giving solid sit-com portrayals, though it falls mostly flat, without any driving sense of urgency.
Even the snazzy, musical scene transitions feel like we’re about to cut to a commercial break.
Oh god, I know my harping on the sit-com aesthetics might come off condescending. It’s an established form and will absolutely suit a broad range of sensibilities, it’s just not what excites me, especially not on a theatre stage. And even within the trappings of that format, I think a writer can establish a more compelling engine for comedy and drama.
I will shout out a moment between Bitter and Case that really struck me, when Rafael’s romantic overtures and Letitia’s hardened defences come to a head. Though there are a handful of other emotional moments, it was the one that rang the most true for me. Bitter especially broke my heart here.
Clyde’s
April 11 to April 26, 2026
Bluma Appel Theatre
(27 Front Street East)
90 minutes
Sterling Jarvis, Johnathan Sousa, Sophia Walker, Augusto Bitter and Jasmine Case in Clyde’s | Photo by Dahlia Katz