By Brian Pope
What’s better than one opening night? Four opening nights!
For the last 29 years, the Pittsburgh New Works Festival has been a champion of the one act play. Each festival sees 12 plays receive full productions across four programs and six more receive staged readings. The shows traverse genre and format, character and experience. The festival itself is also a sort of summit in which an eclectic group of local theater companies (each producing one of the 18 plays) get the chance to see the work of their peers.
All in all, PNWF is like a box of chocolate. What I got from this year’s opening night of Program B was a pair of two handers and a one-man show with three people.
The first play (produced by Thoreau, NM – A Production Company), Like Mom Used to Say…, begins peacefully enough. Doug (Stephen Toth) is thumbing through a photo album, only exceptional because he’s not scrolling through the camera roll on a phone or tablet. His peace is interrupted when Ross (Andrew “AJ” Long) storms in peppering him with accusations. We learn that Doug and Ross are brothers. Throughout the play, they trade cliches (“Every ending is a new beginning in disguise” among many, many others) that their mother would repeat to them to help them cope with life. The source of their conflict and Ross’s visit is the fact that Doug thwarted his suicide attempt earlier that leaving him brain-dead.
At the heart of F.J. Hartland’s (a four-time PNWF Best Play winner) script is a compelling moral dilemma. What is unclear is which side of it he and director Alice McCallister fall. Mr. Long’s desperation for an explanation is palpable and feels just, especially when he implicates (and even sits among) the audience to further push Doug to his emotional limit. When Mr. Toth hits that limit and makes a dramatic emotional plea, all the tension evaporates. Ross spends the rest of the run time using his new beyond-the-grave omniscience to give his brother life advice.
These moments feel tonally out of place, unfortunately ending a play with a promising premise on an unsatisfying and saccharine note.
All Over But The Shooting, a Split Stage Productions production, introduces another twosome with a strong connection considering the prospect of death. Erika Krenn (Kelly) and Angela Rusnak (Quinn) play a pair of jaded and faded pop divas. Backstage at one of her concerts, Quinn finds her vanity vandalized as she considers how a recent unfortunate appearance on The Tonight Show may have laid waste to her career. Kelly, who has recently gained a lot of publicity for leaving singing behind to pursue a doctorate degree at Yale University, enters with a truly bizarre proposal.
How anyone, let alone a Yale student, could actually reason with someone the notion that committing a cold blooded murder or being murdered would be worth it to transcend fame and become “iconic” is something that perhaps only playwright Phil Keeling could explain in person, since he fails to here. If he or director Nate Newell had amped up the satire (a la Chicago), this could have read as more of a cautionary tale than a trite indictment of celebrity culture. Wooden performances from Krenn and Rusnak are only amplified by Newell’s cumbersome staging.
The play’s finale (featuring a visually striking light effect) is a nod to the campiness that could’ve helped the script overall, but by then it’s too little too late.
Generations clash in Richard Manley’s Statin Eye-Land Fairy, presented by Little Lake Theatre. All David (Mark Yochum) wants to do is get to the Staten Island Ferry, but he has to tangle with the all-knowing Cabbie app before he can reach his destination. Voiced by Korey Grecek, Cabbie is what probably lies in our more-immediate-than-we’d-like-to-admit future, a self-driving car AI system. Hilarious misunderstandings involving fairy statues and recorded affirmations read by James Earl Jones ensue until David finally makes it to the ferry. There, he is accosted by Siri on his phone voiced by Amanda Anne Leight and electronically brought up on charges for the way he insulted the Cabbie app.
Outside of the increasingly tiresome trope of playing the use of gender neutral pronouns for laughs, Statin Eye-Land Fairy works very well. Mr. Yochum’s frustration with his devices escalates hilariously throughout Manley’s script. The flawless sound design seamlessly incorporates Mr. Grecek’s and Ms. Leight’s effectively stoic voice over work. Carley Adams’s simple direction does not get in the way of the comedic comfort food that the play delivers.
In the short run, the play may cause you to regard your devices a little more suspiciously than before, but if you also recall this fun romp in the midst of that, it is more than worth it.
The 29th annual Pittsburgh New Works Festival runs through September 29 at the Genesius Theater at Duquesne University. For tickets and more information for all the plays being featured this year, click here.
Brian Pope is a playwright and pop culture obsessive who has been writing for Pittsburgh in the Round since February of 2016. His plays have been produced by his own theatre company, Non-State Actors, as well as Yinz Like Plays?!, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company. He’s also served as dramaturg for City Theatre’s 2018 Young Playwrights Festival and as both stage manager and actor for Alarum Theatre. When he’s not making or reviewing theatre, he’s actively pursuing his other passions, listening to showtunes and watching television.
Categories: Archived Reviews