Lynn Nottage has two shows in London but is not nearly as busy as last year, when she had three premieres in New York. She was juggling so much, she says, that she came down with shingles. The Brooklyn-born playwright is recovered now; serene, articulate and with a professorial air, she sits at the Kiln theatre, where Mlima’s Tale is running, while Clyde’s is about to open at the Donmar Warehouse.
Clyde’s bears shades of Nottage’s 2015 Pulitzer prize-winning drama Sweat, set among Pennsylvanian rustbelt factory workers, which arguably saw Trumpian populism coming. The new play revolves around former prisoners working at a truckers’ sandwich stop-off and features a character from Sweat: Jason, an ex-con and white supremacist, who comes into their kitchen. The role is resumed by Patrick Gibson, who starred in Sweat in 2018 at the Donmar, when it was staged by Lynette Linton, now directing Clyde’s.
