NYC Theater Trip 2021: "Clyde's" at Second Stage Theater at the Helen Hayes Theater

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Title: Clyde's

Location: Second Stage Theater at the Helen Hayes Theater

Written By: Lynn Nottage

Summary: A sort of sequel to her 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat which explores the post-prison future of one of the characters.

"Floyd's" at the Guthrie Theater

I interrupt the constant Minnesota Fringe Festival coverage to bring you a world premiere new play by Lynn Nottage, the only woman to win two Pulitzer Prizes for drama, commissioned by and debuting at the Guthrie Theater. Floyd's is a sort of follow-up to one of her prize-winning plays, Sweat, which I saw on Broadway in 2017 and look forward to seeing at the Guthrie next summer. For both plays, Lynn and frequent collaborator, director Kate Whoriskey, interviewed people in Reading, PA, a town thrust into poverty at the closing of a steel mill in 2008. Sweat deals directly with that issue, and is as devastating as it is true to American life. Floyd's is a bit lighter, perhaps not exactly a comedy, but it focuses more on the healing and moving on of people coming out of prison (including one of the characters from Sweat). With crisply drawn characters beautifully brought to life by the strong five-person cast (three of whom appeared in Sweat on Broadway), Floyd's is a funny, surprising, moving, and very human play.