Canadian Stage: Clyde’s, by playwright Lynn Nottage (Canadian premiere). Director Philip Akin, with Sophia Walker (Clyde); Sterling Jarvis (Montrellous); Augusto Bitter (Rafael); Jasmine Case (Letitia); Johnathan Sousa (Jason). Set Designer Rachel Forbes. Bluma Appel Theatre, April 15, 2026. On stage until April 26, 2026; tickets here.
When is a sandwich much more than a sandwich?
That’s one of the questions asked by Clyde’s, the play by Lynn Nottage that is currently receiving its Canadian premiere in a Canadian Stage production.
Other questions posed include: can people be redeemed from their mistakes? Are there really second chances in life?
The Story
Clyde’s is dive roadside restaurant, popular with truckers, and a last hope call for ex-cons looking to rebuild their lives. Clyde (Sophia Walker) is the owner, a tough as nails woman who takes pleasure in abusing the employees who are looking to better themselves after their release from jail. No one else will hire them, and she makes sure they never forget that fact.
The opening of the play sets out the main themes and two of the primary characters, Clyde herself, and Montrellous, aka Montrel, aka Monty. Monty (Sterling Jarvis), the chef, is older than the three young ex-cons who staff the restaurant, and from his language to his preoccupations, it’s evident he’s moved past the initial stages of disorientation following a release from jail.
He tries to tempt Clyde with one of his sandwich creations, but she resists at every turn, scoffing at his gourmet aspirations. She implies that he’s trying to come on to her sexually — another reason to attempt to ridicule him.
“You too old for the rodeo,” she tells him.
An aspiration — followed by a slap in the face. It’s the reality faced by all of the characters n the story.
Sandwiches, though, are life. Each of the hard pressed employees, from Letitia (Jasmine Case), the single mother who’s made a few bad choices with men and drugs, to Rafael (Augusto Bitter), sweet and vulnerable, who turns to drugs and bravado to get by, and newcomer Jason (Johnathan Sousa), the white guy with a privilege that’s been stripped away, tries to concoct the perfect sandwich. At various points, they offer samples to each other, with Montrellous critiquing. It’s all about the attitude, more than the ingredients, that goes into it.
“I can taste your impatience,” he tells Jason.
Monty is their guru, and his sandwich is perfection.
“This sandwich is my strength. This sandwich is my victory…”
Clyde and her hard edges are just an ever present echo of the unforgiving world that put them in jail, and doesn’t want to see them succeed once they’re out. At one point, she threatens to lie to Jason’s parole officer to get him in trouble.
Letitia has a disabled child who sometimes makes her late. “That’s why I didn’t have children,” Clyde tells her, “because I don’t like excuses.”
She abuses poor Rafael.
The precarious reality of their lives is an ever present shadow. At one point, Letitia likens it to a black hole — it’s the despair that will drag them back down into the old ways that got them into trouble, and even without outside interference, will get them back in jail.
The story unfolds over several days as Jason arrives and tries to learn the ways of the sandwich. They talk about what led to their jail terms, the three of them struggling to fill orders and stay out of Clyde’s bad graces. There are moments when it seems like they’ll make something of the dilapidated restaurant, and a budding romance, but at every turn, progress is never certain.
Can they really leave the dark past behind? Are there really second chances, or are they doomed to scrabble at the bottom of the barrel for the rest of their lives?
The customer as enemy is a minor running theme. Their demands for plain ham and cheese and inappropriate sauces thwart and offend the kitchen crew’s developing gourmet skills.
Nottage’s script is peppered with laughs and hard truths alike, and lets each character flesh out gradually.
Performances
Sophia Walker gives a tour de force performance in the titular role. She’s larger than life, full of malevolence — even when her own dark past is revealed in bits and pieces (unlike the emotional confessionals of the other characters), she resists softness, the notion of being a victim, at every turn.
She’s outrageously mean — to the point of drawing gasps from the audience at points — devastatingly funny, seductive when she wants to be, defiant, and wears her toughness as a shield against the vagaries of the world. Walker uses physicality to embody all of her moods. She’s determined to wring something out of this miserable life, no matter what she has to do to reach her ends.
“This world is mean — I’m just in it,” she tells them.
There is also the sense that, uncomfortably, she and her dark observations about life and about each of the other characters represent a tough to swallow kind of truth.
Stage veteran Sterling Jarvis is perfect in the role of the diner’s elder, the guru who is ever patient with his younger colleagues and their ups and downs. His back story is the most heartbreaking of all, but he’s made his peace with the world as it is, and progress towards real redemption. Hence, his sandwiches are the best.
Letitia, Rafael, and Jason are the most vulnerable, and the most at risk. Augusto Bitter, Jasmine Case, and Johnathan Sousa deliver convincing portrayals of young people who made big mistakes, each under very different circumstances. They emerge as sympathetic, even with flaws that may just see them back in trouble, including Rafael with his poet’s heart, Letitia as a young woman who’s learned not to expect too much from men or life in general, and Jason’s gruff, stiff stance in the face of a world where he expected to do well, only to see that rug pulled out from under him.
The script largely gives them street-style language, particularly for Letitia and Rafael, which lapses for each of them into moments of philosophical eloquence. It sticks out as incongruous, but becomes part of the texture of a play that delivers brutal truths peppered with gag lines and event moments of magic (which I won’t detail to spoil the surprise).
Set & Design
The stage (design by Rachel Forbes) is set up as a convincing diner kitchen, strewn with stainless steel tables, shelves of bowls and other utensils. There’s a grill at one end, and even a working sink at the other. The walls are not-so-white, with a convincing layer of grime where it meets the floor, particularly on the freezer door.
Special mention goes to the numerous sandwiches that have been placed in multiple locations around the set, and which are obviously made fresh — the actors actually eat them at various points during the show.
Costume designer Arianna Moodie has given the younger employees a range of convincing baggy street clothes, and Montrel a more formal chef’s uniform in dark tones. Clyde has a dizzying number of costume changes, including a wig change at the end. She favours tight pants and boots with a range of sexy and stylish tops and jackets. It’s the kind of street style that mirrors her dominant personality.
Final Thoughts
By the end of the performance, you will be convinced that the right sandwich can be life changing.
The other issues raised throughout the play might remain in question. There are no easy answers to be found, and the play doesn’t offer any. As with any complex human situation, the truth probably lies in multiple answers depending on the people in question.
What’s certain is that you’ll laugh, you’ll feel your heart squeeze in empathy at different moments, you’ll gasp at others — and leave with the glow left by a satisfying evening of theatre.
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