By SHARON EBERSON
There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home …
Three Broadway shows in three nights (more on that later) and a “planes, trains and automobiles” adventure getting back to Pittsburgh, and I was ready for some hometown theater.
This week, that means a hilltop in Verona, a storefront in Bellevue and an historic backyard in the Hill District.
Covering theater in Allegheny County takes me back to covering high school sports in the 1980s, when, without the benefit of GPS, I was getting lost on a daily basis.
On Monday, I was playing catch-up with a dazzling production of Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten by Quantum Theatre. Kudos to Melessie Clark, Brett Mack, Wali Jamal and director J. Cody Spellman, and any day there is a clear summer sky over Longue Vue Club. (Read about A Moon for the Misbegotten in Bob Hoover’s onStage Pittsburgh review.)
Thursday night brought a very different experience, tailor-made for me.
Arthurian legends from Mallory to Tennyson to T.H. White to Lerner & Loewe are my wheelhouse, along with the panel-verse of comic books and graphic novels.
I like a good meta reference here and there, too, and this show winkingly broadcasts its use of tropes.
Add James Michael Shoberg’s devilishly executed mission “to satisfy darker tastes in art,” and you have The Rage of the Stage Players’ Mor Dred – a juicy title pun for the well-informed. It channels legendary and contemporary heroes and villains in a dystopian world where the populace is taking to the streets in what some may call anarchy, but others, true nature unleashed.
What’s the masked protector of the realm to do?
If his true identity is a wealthy socialite and politician named Arthur (Cameron Webb), you can be sure there’s a Merlin (Bill Herring), a Morgan (Lindsay Glover), a Gwen (Sophia Clegg), a Lance (Justin Havens) and a dastardly Mordr … a Mor Dred (Luke Frederick), along with betrayal, bedlam and all the things superheroes are supposed to fix. Joseph Stammerjohn, Kevin Mahler, Anthony Babeaux, Andrew Lasswell and co-director Carrie L. Shoberg fill out the cast.
My trip to Gotham, er, Bellevue marked my first visit to the intimate Margaret Partee Performing Arts Center, the usual home of Pittsburgh Savoyards. Rage’s production values in a relatively tiny space – from costumes to videos to effects to sound – are on target for a large-scale superhero/super villain story, writ small … and dark … and eerie.
Rage of the Stage is in its 23rd year, while Mor Dred is in its early stages. Shoberg and his other works, meantime, are having a moment or two – in New Jersey.
He has been nominated for “Best Actor in a Thriller, Sci-Fi, or Fantasy” by the NJ Web Fest for his role in Erik Thompson’s short horror film, Family Tradition. A prolific writer, Shoberg has had his official stage adaptation of Tom Holland’s Fright Night live on since its 2018 debut. The play will have its New Jersey premiere in October, at the The Burgdorff Center for the Performing Arts.
(Tickets and details: Mor Dred is at the Margaret Partee Performing Arts Center, 523 Lincoln Ave., Bellevue, for three more performances, August 10, 15 and 16. https://www.rageofthestage.com/ )
From horror and fantasy, I go to the August Wilson House in the Lower Hill District, as Radio Golf gets underway. The annual production at the House (with some scheduled shows at Madison Arts Center in the Upper Hill) brings Mark Clayton Southers’ Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company within one (Two Trains Running) of a second turn around Wilson’s American Century Cycle.
ON BROADWAY
Those three shows in three days:
ONCE UPON A MATTRESS: I attended the first preview of the feel-good musical comedy, based on The Princess and the Pea and starring Sutton Foster, on July 31. The show that transferred from Encores! at City Center had several of its stars intact: the fabulous Foster in the “shy” role of Princess Winnifred, Michael Urie as Prince Dauntless and Nikki Renee Daniels (Pittsburgh CLO’s The Music Man and Guys & Dolls) as Lady Larkin. Among those joining the cast for its 18-week Broadway run at the Hudson Theatre are Ana Gasteyer as Queen Aggravain, Brooks Ashmanskas as the Wizard, Daniel Breaker as The Jester and Will Chase as Sir Harry. https://onceuponamattressnyc.com/
OH, MARY!: The toast of off-Broadway has moved uptown to rapturous reviews and hysterical laughter. I haven’t heard so much shocked howls since my first time at Book of Mormon. Cole Escola’s audaciously inaccurate portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln is offensive in every way possible to those who might be offended, and a romp of cheekiness that I won’t soon forget. Escola as Mary is a revelation of stupidity, narcissism and outrage on steroids, supported by actors (Conrad Ricamora as Mary’s husband, James Scully as Mary’s teacher, Bianca Leigh as Mary’s chaperone and Tony Macht as Mary’s husband’s assistant) who equally go to places that others may fear to tread. The venerable Lyceum Theatre has been decked out in tributes to Escola’s (fake) accomplishments that keep the gags up, coming and going. https://www.ohmaryplay.com
STEREOPHONIC: With five Tony Awards in 13 nominations, the “play with music” delivers, and takes its time doing it. The dissolution of a top-charting band channels Fleetwood Mac’s breakup, over the course of many months in a recording studio, with two engineers dragged into the band’s angst. Pitch-perfect performances include Carnegie Mellon alums and Tony nominees Sarah Pidgeon and Will Brill, the latter sporting a British accent and winner of 2024’s best featured actor in a play. A cast album of the original music allows everyone to hear Pidgeon’s uncanny vocal resemblance to Stevie Nicks. https://stereophonicplay.com
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