FAR MORE THAN A SNACK
Caught this late, and it’s much reviewed and almost sold out. But it’s worth saying in a brief word here that if you buy a return as I did, you are in luck. Lynn Nottage’s play is a little gem, realized with love in a gorgeous creation of the scruffy back- kitchen of a Pennlylvania trucker’s diner.
. The staff are all fresh out of jail and near-hopeless lives before. The boss is another ex-con, an angry she-ball of hate and scorn, Clyde. In a hundred minutes, the workers serve, chop, bicker and bond and reveal odd sad edges of their grim shaming back stories. But above all they discuss what might constitute the absolute sublime and ultimate in expression through the medium of sandwiches.
Lynette Linton’s cast are spot on. Giles Terera is a sort of guru, philosopher of food and the beauty of flavour and artistry; Gbemisola Ikumelo and Sebastian Orozco are struggling lost souls needing to find one another, and Patrick Gibson the most moving of all: covered in racist-gang tattoos, he moves in the hundred minutes from sullen hopeless anger to a sort of innocent generous humility, fed by the small everyday wonder of the job and the limitless possibilities of perfection. In sandwiches.
Much of the commentary has been how funny it is, and sweary, and executed sometimes with surreal balletic moves. All true . But I think it’s deep as they go, a wonderful evocation of human hope, endeavour and creativity. With relish.. And you might just find a ticket before the month’s out.
BOx office donmarwarehouse.com To 2 dec
theatreCat 