The setting is the titular truck stop diner on a lonely stretch of road in Pennsylvania.
Often looming large through that window is the glowering visage of the proprietor, Clyde, played by the formidable Uzo Aduba, an Emmy winner for “Orange Is the New Black.” More often, Clyde is storming around the kitchen, a volcano of irritation, contempt and occasionally violent rage aimed at her unfortunate employees.
And yet, as Clyde knows, and takes taunting pleasure in reminding her workers, they have little choice but to work there.
As the play opens, the senior kitchen staff member, Montrellous, played by Ron Cephas Jones, has just finished telling Clyde the history of his incarceration , to which she responds with a shrugging scorn: “I don’t do pity.” Equally pointedly — and more symbolically — she rejects the grilled cheese sandwich with garlic butter lovingly prepared by Montrellous.
The other members of the staff are more sympathetic to Montrellous’s culinary explorations; in fact they quietly revere him, and are enticed into concocting recipes for unusual sandwiches, hoping to win his approval.
Jason , the only white staffer, is festooned with racist-tinged tattoos that make him a target of suspicion.
The camaraderie among the kitchen workers, marked by comic raillery and frequent gibes at their employer, gives the play a jovial warmth.
Donovan movingly reveals how Jason, at first an embittered cipher, gradually opens up, disclosing that he regrets the youthful anger and ignorance that led him down a dark path from which he is trying to claw his way back.
Montrellous is a stark contrast to Clyde, whom Aduba charges with a fulminating hostility that almost never abates – as the other characters do, you almost flinch whenever she enters.
But “Clyde’s” nevertheless also feels schematic, as scenes of confrontation with Clyde alternate with scenes of communal sandwich-making that bind the kitchen gang together.
The most momentous and elaborately told of these confessions comes, naturally, from Montrellous.
A somewhat abrupt ending arrives shortly after Montrellous tells his story, when Clyde storms into the kitchen spewing abuse, yet again, and finds her workers, inspired by what they have just heard, for once in no mood to put up with her maliciousness.