Beginning tonight, The Vortex Theater (2900 Carlisle NE) is serving up some home-cooked drama with a side of laughs at 7 p.m. sharp, so don’t be late or you’ll have to answer to the boss. Written by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and featuring an all-local cast directed by Albuquerque’s own Marya Errin Jones, Clyde’s makes its run at one of the city’s most beloved black-box theaters Fridays through Sundays from May 16 until June 8. The crew at Clyde’s truck stop diner might have a shady past, but they make one hell of a meal. They’ll happily let you in on the latest kitchen scandal — and maybe even share the recipe for the perfect sandwich — if you help them keep the owner off their back.
“As a society, I don’t think we really take into consideration the lives of incarcerated people who’ve been released, how they re-enter the world and what choices they want to make,” Jones says. “This play is an opportunity to look at those conditions.”
Clyde’s takes place in a rundown truck stop on the back roads of Pennsylvania. Jones says the setting is a “liminal halfway space” for the play’s complex characters — a kitchen staffed by workers recently released from incarceration attempting to rebuild their lives. She says, at its heart, Clyde’s is a comedy, and although it deals with heavy subjects, it remains buoyant as a play.
The employees at Clyde’s are all played by local actors, many of whom are no strangers to the Vortex stage. Marcus Ivey, who recently performed in a Vortex production of King James, plays Montrellous — a kind, calm, caring type of dude who’s served time for good reason. The cast is spiced up with a bit of workplace romance between Raphael (Ramses Loera) and Leticia (Mirey “Mimi” Lopez) and the philosophical awakening of Jason (Issac Galarneau), a formerly brainwashed convict with a new outlook on life. Clyde, the take-no-prisoners queen of the roadside joint, is played by Jenelle Baptiste and Angela Littleton. Both actresses dish out their own flavor of harsh, hilarious discipline with a pinch of vulnerability during different performances.
“People look at Clyde as this very difficult, horrible person, but I look at Clyde as kind of the person who puts the heat under these characters to get them to move into their next phase of living,” Jones says. “She’s some kind of kitchen torture goddess who gets them to say, ‘No, I’m not going to take this anymore. I have goals, I want to do something with my life.’ And I think that’s the purpose that she serves. To be honest, it’s easy to dislike her, but it’s harder to understand her complexities. And I think that’s what we’re looking for in these performances.”
Dachary Vann is a member of the Vortex Board of Directors and the artistic liaison on the set of Clyde’s. He says the theater is committing to bringing a wide breadth of art to Albuquerque — everything from family-friendly productions such as Rudolfo Anaya’s The Farolitos of Christmas to “challenging theater” such as Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive. Although it will make you laugh and hopefully float your spirits, Clyde’s falls into the latter category of performances.
“It’s about deeply human characters,” Vann says. “Which is to say they’re full of heart, but they’re also flawed. It’s about characters trying to find their way through life with all the baggage that incarceration has brought them, as well as what led them to incarceration, and navigating through their past and into the future.”
For tickets, showtimes and info visit www.vortexabq.org, and keep an eye out for an upcoming announcement about which directors and plays will be hitting Albuquerque for the Vortex’s 50th Birthday next season.
Clyde’s
May 16 – June 8
The Vortex Theater
2900 Carlisle Blvd. NE
$24