Does the perfect sandwich exist? That’s one of many questions asked in Clyde’s, a dramatic comedy by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage.
Tickets are selling fast for New Stages Theatre’s staged reading of the play, the final show of its 2025-26 season, which takes place for one night only at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre in downtown Peterborough on Sunday, June 14 at 7 p.m.
Dubbed “a fresh new comedy full of hunger, heart, and smarts,” Clyde’s is named for the play’s truck-stop diner where those who have served time are now serving up grub. As a group of ex-con line cooks work hard to redeem themselves, they are on an elusive quest to create the perfect sandwich.
“This is really a joyful play,” said Nottage in a 2023 interview with Donmar Warehouse. “It’s a play about creativity. It’s a play about humanity. And, ultimately, I think it’s a play about how all of us have something to contribute to our society — that everyone brings their own special ingredient.”
New Stages Theatre is no stranger to Nottage’s work, as the company ended its 2022-2023 season with a staged reading of her 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat, a tense drama centred on a working-class community of labourers in Reading, Pennsylvania set in 2000 and 2008.
A highly accomplished American playwright, screenwriter, and installation artist, Nottage is the only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, including a 2009 award for her play Ruined. Nottage also wrote the book for MJ the Musical, a Tony Award-winning musical about Michael Jackson.
Nottage was inspired to write Clyde’s when she was researching Sweat. While conducting interviews in Reading, she learned of people being marginalized for having been previously incarcerated.
“I wanted to figure out a way to make the formerly incarcerated visible and to give them three dimensions so that people understand that folks are not the worst thing that they’ve ever done,” Nottage said in her interview with Warehouse.
She began working on the play with a 2014 Joyce Award commission with Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, though it was originally titled Floyd’s when the world premiere was held at the theatre in 2019. By the time it headed to Broadway in 2021, however, George Floyd had been murdered in Minneapolis and Nottage quickly changed the name so audiences would not be misled to believe the play was related to that incident.
The original Broadway production was nominated for four Tony Awards and won four Drama Desk Awards, along with a Drama League Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, and the Clarence Derwent Award.
New Stages’ June 14 staged reading features Ordena Stephens-Thompson as Clyde, the tough-as-nails and formerly incarcerated boss of the truck stop who exploits and abuses the diner staff. Stephens-Thompson is a familiar face to New Stages audiences, having appeared in the company’s 2023 staged reading of Sweat, the 2025 staged reading of Serving Elizabeth, and both runs of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play in 2023 and 2025.
The guiding light in search of the perfect sandwich is the enthusiastic Montrellous, played by Sterling Jarvis, fresh off his performance as the “sage and serene” character in Canadian Stage’s production of Clyde’s at Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto in April.
“I saw this play on opening night,” New Stages artistic director Mark Wallace told kawarthaNOW. “It really hit home with audiences, with many great laughs and also some terrific depth and questions about second chances and life after incarceration.”
Rounding out the ex-convicts working as line cooks are Chelsea Russell, who also joined New Stages for Serving Elizabeth last season, René Escobar Jr., who performed in the 2023 staged reading of Sweat, and Tim Walker, a Peterborough native who last joined New Stages for its full production of The Pitmen Painters in 2016.
Walker will be playing Jason, a character with white supremacist tattoos from Sweat who becomes the newest cook in the kitchen at Clyde’s, having just been released from prison after serving time for a near-fatal aggravated assault that was part of the climax of Sweat.
Despite the crossover, audiences need not be familiar with the earlier play to enjoy Clyde’s. In fact, though Clyde’s also touches on important social issues, it does not carry over the grim subject matter and tone of Sweat.
“I wanted to lean into a play that is optimistic because in this moment, I felt it’s really necessary for us to imagine a better world and to image how, despite having all these differing points of views, that we can build something communally that tastes good and that feels good,” said Nottage in an interview promotion for Goodman Theatre.
“I think that’s really the point of the play — that we all have to make the sandwich together and that it’s a better sandwich.”
Directed by Wallace with assistant direction by Lisa Dixon and stage management by Shannon McKenzie LeBlanc, the staged reading of Clyde’s is presented by Sandbagger Hard Seltzer and Silver Bean Café. The play is recommended for ages 16 and up due to strong language and mature themes, including references to incarceration, addiction, racism, and workplace conflict.
With all fees included, tickets cost $34, with a $24 “welcome rate” for those who need it and a $44 “pay it forward” rate for those who can afford to help cover the cost of the welcome rate. Tickets can be purchased at the Market Hall box office at 140 Charlotte Street, by calling 705-749-1146, or online at tickets.markethall.org.
Prior to the staged reading, New Stages will take to the stage and announced its highly anticipated 2026-27 season lineup. Subscriptions will be going on sale that night, with the chance to choose seats for the next season.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be media sponsor of New Stages Theatre Company’s 2025-26 season.
