The Oscars, Emmys and Tonys give out awards for best actors and best directors. Typically, these honorees are working with the very best material. Maybe “best” should mean that actor or director who takes flawed or flimsy material and turns it into something worth watching. That’s the miracle director Kate Whoriskey performs with Lynn Nottage’s sketchy new play, “Clyde’s,” which opened Tuesday at Second Stage’s Helen Hayes Theater.
What Whoriskey’s flashy direction can’t disguise is how much Nottage borrows from a 2019 foodie comedy presented Off Broadway at MCC. In Theresa Rebeck’s “Seared,” Raul Esparza’s chef refused to compromise his cassoulet au confit de canard and other dishes to please any VIP’s unsophisticated palate.