REVIEW: Lynn Nottage’s eatery-set ‘Clyde’s is a lively, shrewd parable of bad Broadway bosses and oppressed theater workers

Working in the kitchen at Clyde’s, a roadside sandwich joint in Berks County, Pa., is no fun whatsoever. The beaten-down, formerly incarcerated staffers, all of whom have had major struggles in life, are forever in fear of the manager, the kind of toxic personality who will get right up in your face on a daily basis and, on occasion, will bruise both your psyche and your physical body.

And yet, “Clyde’s” is a dark Broadway comedy, replete with a terrifyingly funny performance from Uzo Aduba (”Orange is the New Black”) as the titular boss from hell.

And, to my mind, this is a very clever, multi-layered and deliciously self-aware allegory from the writer Lynn Nottage that deftly shrouds its true intent between two pieces of bread.

The play, I reckon, really is all about the abusive ways of some tyrannical producers and executives in the entertainment industry and the plight of the oppressed ordinary workers therein.

Don’t be too distracted by the metaphorical remove. Nottage, a very skilled political provocateur and intellectual moralist, has found a way to write about something she wanted to write about (Broadway abuses of workers), while not actually writing about it and also writing a different commercial play at the same time.

Here’s the deal. Things are proceeding as normal in the sandwich shop, a favorite of truckers, until the arrival of Montrellous (Ron Cephas Jones), an auteur chef, you might say, who, with a flick of a fresh herb, turns your ordinary grilled cheese, or whatever, into a gourmet experience.

This character, a stand-in for honorable playwrights, cares about those who translate his recipes (er, plays) into actual products on a daily basis. These include struggling Letitia (Kara Young), a woman trying to lose herself from an abusive boyfriend; Jason (Edmund Donovan), an ex-con trying to get his life together; and Rafael (Reza Salazar), an exuberant personality who wants to be a creative artist, if only Clyde will give him a break.

She does not. She knows only how to harangue and abuse, constantly insisting that the truckers (audiences) who make up the clientele don’t want high-quality fare but are perfectly happy with predictable and more profitable sandwiches. She uses this excuse to keep her workers in her place, constantly playing on their insecurities and tenuous holds on the ladder of successful, happy lives.

Their willingness to please is, in this world, their biggest vulnerability. And, eventually, it all comes down to a final battle between the righteous artiste Montrellous and the bad boss who can hire and fire at will and who holds all of the fiscal cards.

Just to make the metaphor complete, Clyde even makes references to the desires of her investors, the refuge of every Broadway producer trying to bend artists to (usually) their will.

At no time does Clyde’s feel even remotely like a real sandwich shop in Berks County, but I don’t think that’s the point here. And Nottage’s equally skilled partner in all of this cleverness, the director Kate Whoriskey, makes a point of creating much kitchen zaniness, giving the show plenty of fun and pop. That’s all a bit of an in-joke, too, for anyone paying attention.

Nottage, the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice — the first in 2009 for “Ruined,” and the second in 2017 for “Sweat” — has often been accused of being insufficiently commercial for Broadway; here it feels like she’s deliberately satirizing that judgement with an allegorical cattle prod that likely will still be fun for audiences who are blissfully oblivious to all of the insider stuff that has riven Broadway in recent months.

It’s a very clever play, buoyed by lively performances and a director willing to take risks. I suspect “Clyde’s” will be talked about for a good while among Broadway insiders.

The allegory has its limits. The restaurant ends up a big hit, thanks to Montrellous’ work, and it’s never logical why Clyde is so opposed to the great but still simple sandwiches that apparently are making her so profitable. I think Nottage is trying to say that producers (and maybe capitalist Broadway itself) constantly underestimates the public and that if only the artists were in charge, success and good art would come out of the oven.

It’s more complicated than that in reality, of course. And unfair to decent producers trying to cater to audience tastes. But this is Nottage’s play and statement on this moment. And she has the burners firing on all cylinders.