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    After ‘Clyde’s,’ Lynn Nottage Just Has Two Shows Onstage. ‘Whew!’

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    With one play closed, Nottage can focus on “MJ” on Broadway and “Intimate Apparel” at Lincoln Center Theater. And maybe even catch her breath.It was just a flute of champagne after Sunday’s final Broadway performance of her play “Clyde’s,” but Lynn Nottage was genuinely happy to have it — not only to toast the end of the limited run with the rest of the company, upstairs at the Hayes Theater, but also to sneak a brief, rare moment of indulgence in a schedule that’s lately been too crammed for a glass of wine.Starring Uzo Aduba as the owner of a sandwich shop staffed with people who have served time, and Ron Cephas Jones as a culinary artist who leads the workers in a quest for the perfect sandwich, “Clyde’s” started a remarkable season for Nottage, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. For four days this month, until “Clyde’s” closed, she had three new shows onstage in New York; the others, still in previews, are the Broadway musical “MJ,” about Michael Jackson, and the opera “Intimate Apparel,” adapted from her play of the same name, at Lincoln Center Theater.For months she shuttled among them, dashing back to “Clyde’s” for talkbacks and to catch performances when understudies went on. All while teaching full time at Columbia University and, in October, releasing the short film “Takeover,” produced by her company Market Road Films, for the Op-Docs series of The New York Times.Nottage shares a toast with actors and staff after the final performance of “Clyde’s” at the Hayes Theater.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAfter the champagne toast on Sunday evening, Nottage came downstairs for an interview in a lounge at the theater to talk about her season and about “Clyde’s,” which she called “Floyd’s” when it had its premiere in Minneapolis in 2019, and renamed following the killing of George Floyd in 2020. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.So how are you?I’m very overworked. [laughs] I was just describing this particular moment as like making art in the eye of a hurricane.You’ve decided to make a lot of art in the eye of a hurricane.It’s a lot of art, yeah. It’s the moment in which I was invited to make art, but it’s also the most difficult, fraught, complicated moment in theater history. It would be stressful, you know, making three shows without the added element of Covid. But add that sort of special ingredient, and it’s very complicated.Are you getting the time to savor this?I started rehearsal in October for both shows, “MJ” and “Clyde’s.” From October to December, I was rehearsing and teching and seeing the shows at night, and teaching full time at Columbia. I did not have a single day off. And then in mid-December, we began rehearsals for “Intimate Apparel.” But strangely, in the Covid shutdown, when for 10 days we didn’t have “MJ” going, I suddenly had just a little bit of a pause. I could breathe.Is there joy in it?This is the dream. I feel immensely proud of all three of the works of art that I have created. They’re so different and they represent different aspects of who I am as an artist in different parts of my brain. Part of the joy of making all three of these pieces of art at the same time is that it allows me to leave one space and enter another completely different space and then, you know, leave that space and enter another one. And so I never get bored.A curtain call, from left, with Edmund Donovan, Ron Cephas Jones, Uzo Aduba, Kara Young and Reza Salazar.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“Clyde’s” is a comedy.It is a comedy. It’s also a feel-good play. And particularly at this moment I think that audiences need something that is healing and soothing, and that allows them to open up their hearts and allow laughter in. And that’s what I was hoping to do.It was a long journey with this play, yes?It doesn’t seem like a super long journey to me. This journey was just interrupted because of world circumstances. We’ve been through a lot. The world changed in ways that now seem incomprehensible to me. I mean, I kind of can’t believe that we lived through it. I’ll be an old lady with my grandchildren, like: “Yes, let me tell you about Covid and Donald Trump.” [laughs] You know, it’s sort of similar when I think about my grandmother talking about the Depression and the war, and it just seemed like, “How did you survive?” Now I know.Did you think that when you finally got to do “Clyde’s,” we would be out of the pandemic?I think all of us thought that. There was a moment of incredible optimism. And still, when we began “Clyde’s,” we had all of the Covid protocols in place and the Covid officer, and we wore masks throughout rehearsals and the actors were permitted to take off the masks on the stage. And that felt like a victory, like, OK, we’re moving through this difficult moment. And audiences were coming back and you’d walk through this theater district and it felt vibrant and alive. And you know, there were sprinklings of tourists, and restaurants were packed. You couldn’t get reservations.I think that something like “Clyde’s” in any other climate would have been a hit, and it would have continued to run. We always had a limited run, and we ran through that period of time. But I think that any other time, we could have kept going. It just kind of breaks my heart to make something that I feel is connecting with audiences in a moment in which audiences feel reluctant to come to theater. But for us, I think one of the real positive notes is that we were able to simulcast.Nottage strolls with Kate Whoriskey, right, the director of “Clyde’s.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesTell me about that.We became sort of the beta test for Broadway. Like, can this concept work? Can you do live theater that’s projected into people’s living rooms and people actually tune in and have an experience? And what we discovered is, yes. So many people who were either fearful to come to the theater, or had Covid and couldn’t come to the theater, bought tickets and had an experience that wasn’t live in the fact that their bodies were in the theater and they were exchanging energy with the actors, but it still had the kind of spontaneity, because they didn’t know what was going to happen. I think it’s going to be an interesting bonanza for theater.How different is your experience of this season from a normal season?Under normal circumstances, after shows you go out for drinks with people. There’s a real sense of community. You see people from other shows. You feel really very much part of a season. But here, every show is an island because of Covid. People do the show and they go home.Where did you get your work ethic?It’s fear. It’s fear that it may all go away. There was a moment in my life in which my father had an accident which didn’t permit him to work, and my mother, who was a schoolteacher, suddenly had to support the entire family. And I saw how hard she worked and I thought, Oh my God, that could happen to me. You know, that any moment your circumstances can change. And you find yourself in dire straits. And I thought, OK, I’m just not going to let that happen.How old were you then?I was maybe 11 or 12.By now, the fear can’t be about being in dire straits. Can it really?Yeah, I mean, it’s not rational. [laughs] It just is a fact.But I’ve always worked. This is why I think I write about working people — that’s what I do.Nottage leaves a message on the wall at the Hayes Theater.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesSo now that you’ll be slacking with just two shows in previews —With just two shows, it’s like, whew! But teaching begins again next week. And they want us to teach remotely, and I have a class that’s not a remote class. It really is about being immersed in experiences. I’m like, what am I going to do?I have to figure it out, but I don’t have time to figure it out. I’m like, OK, tomorrow morning I will wake up and from 7 to 8:30, I’ll figure it out. More

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      ‘National Champions’ Review: A College Football Revolution

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      Athletes go on strike seeking health insurance in this drama as a coach tries to forge his legacy.In New Orleans, two college teams, the Cougars and the Wolves, are days from facing off in a major game — a game that will make or break the legacy of one coach. That would be James Lazor of the Wolves. One of the TV sportscasters hyping the game announces, “Monday night is about etching his name in the history books.”His star quarterback, LeMarcus James, has other plans. Along with his best friend, a lesser player named Emmett Sunday, James is going on strike. Referring to his fellow college athletes, James says in one televised statement, “Over 12,000 of us participate in a multibillion-dollar business that doesn’t even give us health insurance.”Written by Adam Mervis and directed by Ric Roman Waugh, “National Champions” is a drama whose timeliness has only been slightly compromised by the N.C.A.A.’s recent interim policy allowing athletes to earn revenue via endorsement deals. To go by this fictional movie’s argumentation, that real-life shift only slightly changes the overall picture for college athletes.Coach Lazor is played by J.K. Simmons, but his character here is no “Whiplash”-style martinet. He’s ostensibly compassionate, and says he sees LeMarcus as a son. But, unsurprisingly, the coach’s patriarchal stance is later shown to be part of the problem.The movie wants to make its points on class and race hotly. LeMarcus, appealingly played by Stephan James, is Black, and then again so is Katherine Poe (a simultaneously imposing and enigmatic Uzo Aduba), the ruthless lawyer the N.C.A.A. has put on a mission to destroy and discredit the quarterback. The vicious machinations echo an adage popularized by Jenny Holzer: “Abuse of power comes as no surprise.” But the movie dilutes its impact with lackluster direction of samey scenes — people in hotel rooms speechifying — and a distracting nighttime soap subplot.National ChampionsRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Movies

      Uzo Aduba Adjusts Her Mood With Playlists and ‘The Real Housewives’

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      The actress talks about sports, her latest film and return to the stage, and why a clean, white pair of Converse All Stars is the shoe for almost any occasion.Before she was scooping up Emmys for “Orange Is the New Black” and “Mrs. America,” Uzo Aduba was winning medals as a star sprinter at Boston University. So when the script arrived for “National Champions,” about a battle between the National Collegiate Athletic Association and student football players demanding fair compensation for their talents, Aduba was fast onboard.“I am myself an N.C.A.A. collegiate athlete and recipient of a scholarship and have known, sadly, many people who have been a part of the system and have benefited positively, of course, from the academic element — and who have also had longtime needs they’ve not been able to meet,” she said. “So I understood the complexity of the issue and the conversation.”In “National Champions,” Aduba plays Katherine, a fixer hired to use whatever means necessary to get LeMarcus James (Stephan James) — a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback who incites a players’ strike three days before the national championship — back in the game.But just as nobody is the villain in her own story, Aduba prefers to think of Katherine as a survivor tasked with a thankless job. The same could be said of her title role in the Broadway production of “Clyde’s,” about the ex-con proprietor of a truck-stop diner where all the cooks have done time.Some may call Clyde the devil, but “I think she is really a reflection of every obstacle and aggression that our society holds for women like her,” she said. “She is a direct reflection of the world.”Calling from her dressing room between performances, Aduba discussed her cultural necessities, like getting into character with a playlist, winding down to “The Real Housewives” and curling up in a cozy robe, no matter where she is. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “The Real Housewives” I watch all of them, let me start there. Asking me, “Do I have a favorite?” feels like asking me, quite frankly, if I have a favorite child. They all have different tasks, different stories, different energies. It honestly feels like Grecian-level drama, just so over the top. So big, their troubles. All the emotions are huge. They just announced they’re going to do a “Real Housewives of Dubai,” and, sight unseen, I’m in.2. Sunglasses I love the personality of them, and what you’re choosing both to see and let be seen. I have some that are totally a reflector or super dark and nobody can see my eyes, but I can see out. I have some that are super faint, and we both can see each other. I have some that are really fun with a design on the frame. They’re a subtle way of showing personality. But if I’m out and about, and somebody wants to stop and talk, I usually wind up putting them up on my head so that we can meet eye-to-eye — so that we’re talking to each other, not just like you’re talking to me.3. Live theater I feel like whether you’re onstage or in the audience, you are a part of the show. I think the audience is a huge character in the production who has their own role as well, whether we know it or not. The actors and the designers and everybody, especially when we’re in previews, are informing story based on the audience’s role. That’s that final critical piece. Here in “Clyde’s,” when we were in rehearsal, obviously we could hear the play. But we can’t really know the play until that final actor-character comes into the space. And that’s the part of the audience.4. The New York Times Basic Pesto recipe This was not a New York Times plug. [Laughs] I legit have the screenshot on my phone, and it is a legit household favorite. The only thing that I add to it is a meat because it doesn’t call for any meat in your recipe. So I’ll either add grilled chicken that I’ll cook on the stovetop or a grilled turkey sausage or a vegan sausage. Take your recipe and add meat.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘Clyde’s’ Review: Sometimes a Hero Is More Than Just a Sandwich

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      In Lynn Nottage’s bright new comedy, cooks at a greasy spoon dream of remaking the menu — and their lives.We are living in Greek times — or so you might conclude from the preponderance of Greek tragedies turned out by today’s playwrights. The world they show us is too dark for anything but the cruelest of tales, the bleakest of forms.And no wonder. The systems that control our lives — institutional racism, predatory capitalism, the prison-industrial complex — seem as powerful and implacable as gods. What can humans do about fate, these playwrights suggest, but submit to it and hope to preserve the story?Lynn Nottage has sometimes been one of them. Her two Pulitzer Prizes are for works in which the world and its people are trapped in an abusive relationship. In “Ruined,” women prove to be the real targets in the Congolese civil war. In “Sweat,” steelworkers resisting their union-busting management inexorably wind up busting one another.But Nottage’s delightful new play, “Clyde’s,” which opened at the Helen Hayes Theater on Tuesday, dares to flip the paradigm. Though it’s still about dark things, including prison, drugs, homelessness and poverty, it somehow turns them into bright comedy. 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.Which is not to say the choices are easy. In the kitchen of the truck stop diner that gives the play its title, the cooks making the sandwiches have all served time. Letitia (Kara Young) “got greedy” and stole “some oxy and addy to sell on the side” after breaking into a pharmacy to obtain “seizure medication” for her daughter. Rafael (Reza Salazar) held up a bank but (a) with a BB gun, and (b) only because he wanted to buy his girlfriend a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. We don’t at first get the story of how Montrellous (Ron Cephas Jones) wound up behind bars, but he is so saintly that Letitia, called Tish, believes it must have been elective.In any case, like the others, he has paid the price, and keeps paying it. As the joint’s proprietor, Clyde (Uzo Aduba), enjoys pointing out, she’s the only employer in Reading, Penn., who will hire “morons” like them. She does so not because she too was once incarcerated; don’t accuse her of a soft heart. (Of the crime that landed her in prison the only thing she says is that the last man who tried to hurt her “isn’t around to try again, I made damn sure of that.”) Rather, Clyde has shady reasons to keep the overhead low and the morale even lower.Aduba, far left, as the shady restaurant proprietor Clyde, and her cooks, from left: Reza Salazar, Kara Young, Jones and Edmund Donovan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn Aduba’s hilarious and scalding performance, Clyde, wearing a succession of skintight don’t-mess-with-me outfits by Jennifer Moeller, is a shape-shifting hellhound, all but breathing fire. (The pyrotechnics are by J&M Special Effects.) Though “not indifferent to suffering,” she tells Montrellous, she doesn’t “do pity,” which is an understatement. 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 (Edmund Donovan), recently out of prison and covered with white supremacist tattoos. (The other characters, in this production, are Black and Latino.) 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. Despite his tats and defenses, Jason is a puppy, fully domesticated before the play is half over.This conception of Jason worried me at first. People who have seen “Sweat” will recognize him as one of the perpetrators of a heinous attack on a Colombian American busboy at the climax of that play, also set in Reading. (Another character suffers a traumatic brain injury in the process.) 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.Even if you don’t know “Sweat,” though, “Clyde’s” may slightly cloy. The three other cooks, with their softball crimes, begin to seem a pinch too adorable. Tish, in Young’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.Still, where’s the action? Another underdeveloped plotline explores the possibility of the diner becoming a destination restaurant. In yet another, a pro forma (but totally heartwarming) romance buds between two of the characters. 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. All the cooks have served time. Young, left, plays Tish who stole “some oxy and addy to sell on the side.” And Salazar, as Rafael, held up a bank to buy his girlfriend a Cavalier King Charles spaniel.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYet in “Clyde’s,” Nottage does something shrewd with the obvious underlinings that can sometimes make her meticulously researched plays feel didactic. By putting them into a character whose goal is in fact to educate, and by blowing them up into amusing overstatements, she keeps the play itself from becoming gassy. 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. She leans beautifully into the sweetness of the cooks but also, bending the other way, into the sourness of Clyde, for whom Nottage has written great zingers. When Rafael complains about the rotting Chilean sea bass she expects him to cook, she responds, approximately, “You think Colonel Sanders didn’t fry up a couple of rats to make ends meet?”Playwrights sometimes do the same. 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. (It was originally called “Floyd’s” — until George Floyd was murdered.) Though it ultimately rejects the Greek model, it is still about gods and mortals. What is Clyde but a greasy-spoon Satan, the diabolical voice seductively whispering “Don’t get too high on hope” to people trying to escape their past?Still, the cooks are in purgatory, not hell. They are not merely victims of fate; they can use their moral imagination to resist the Clydes of this world. That they discover the power of that imagination in the most unlikely way, by making food, is what makes the play funny. The point would be much the same, though, if it weren’t: Sometimes, there’s a good reason you can’t stand the heat. When that happens, get out of the kitchen!Clyde’sThrough Jan. 16 at the Helen Hayes Theater, Manhattan; 2st.com. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

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      in Television

      ‘In Treatment’ Is Back. How Does That Make You Feel?

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      Pandemic tensions led HBO to make a new version of the therapy drama, which stars Uzo Aduba and aims to reduce stigmas about mental health care.The writer Jennifer Schuur (“My Brilliant Friend,” “Unbelievable”) has seen the same therapist every week for 17 years. “It is one of the most significant relationships of my life,” she said. Sometimes friends and family question that longevity. More