By SHARON EBERSON
It took persistence to bring Andy Warhol’s Tomato home, and that, Elizabeth Elias Huffman has in abundance. The artistic director of the new PICT (Pittsburgh International Classic Theatre) first saw the play by McKeesport native Vince Melocchi, in Los Angeles, in 2019.
The two-hander is set in 1946 Pittsburgh, where 18-year-old Andy Warhola, a student at Carnegie Tech, finds himself in the basement of a Homestead bar, owned by Mario “Bones” Bonino, a middle-aged Italian American from McKeesport. Over the course of the summer, Andy and Bones form an unlikely bond.
The play went on to Chicago and finally, in September 2023, Huffman brought Andy home, as part of PICT’s first Bards From the Burgh reading series. On Friday, a special preview at The Andy Warhol Museum kicks off a hometown comeback: the first of two announced productions, in a season that will land at Carnegie Stage, PICT’s new home.
Huffman will direct Andy Warhol’s Tomato, with Bards From the Burgh performer Matt Henderson as Andy and Johnny Patalano as Bones. The reading was “by far” the most popular play among audiences of the series.
“I’ve been committed to this play for quite a long time. I’ve known Vince for a long time, and when the play was done in Los Angeles, I had not even moved back to Pittsburgh yet, but I thought to myself, ‘Why is this not being done in Pittsburgh? It’s a Pittsburgh story,’ ” said Huffman, a Monongahela native.
She had tried unsuccessfully to get other companies interested in the play, so when she became PICT’s artistic director, it was an obvious choice.
“I love the play, and what it says in a broader sense,” said Huffman.
The Los Angeles Times, in making Andy Warhol’s Tomato a 2019 Critics Choice, praised it as “a work of art.” The PICT description echoes the Times’ review: “This tender and beautiful play examines the complexities between urban-LGBTQ lifestyle and blue-collar sensibilities, reinforcing our aspirations that divisions can be bridged by our fundamental need to create.”
Friday’s preview came about when an audience member at last year’s reading contacted a friend at the Warhol Museum, and suggested it should be done there.
“They read the play and they really liked it, and they felt that it would be a lovely way for me to launch my first season as an artistic director with PICT,” Huffman said. “It will be much-truncated in terms of its production values. We are designing a different set for the tiny space. … We’re really looking forward to testing the waters with it at the Warhol, and we’re also working with them on some of the talkbacks.”
Those include one with the playwright, and another with Donald Warhola, Andy Warhol’s nephew and vice president and a board member of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. He is a liaison to the museum, where he works as a Warhola family historian.
The design concept when the play moves to Carnegie Stage, Huffman said, “is going to be really beautiful on every level. I’m so pleased with the design team for this show, and they too have been very much a part of the collaborative process.”
The play itself is an apocryphal story, based on loads of research by playwright Melocchi.
“I think the most important thing that you learn about Andy Warhol is his sense of self at a very, very young age, that never wavered,” Huffman said. “And his curiosity is another thing that I think was a trademark of Andy Warhol – his curiosity about everybody, no matter where they came from. The other interesting element is the working-class Italian-American bartender and his encounter with somebody like Andy Warhol that he has never, ever encountered before. And in the end, I think most beautifully, it asks a question for the audience to think about, and that is: What defines art?”
Huffman referred to a line from the play that she has made its tagline, about the works that famously sending shockwaves through the art world by elevating the likes of a Campbell’s soup can, a Brillo box and a tomato.
“There’s a line that I love in the play, that Bones says as he’s trying to encourage the young Andy Warhol. It’s that there’s beauty in the mundane.”
The Andy-Bones relationship reveals two very different people finding it hard to live as their authentic selves, at a time when America was getting back on its feet after World War II.
“Things have changed and people can be their private selves more publicly now. Whereas at that time it was a different world. And I think that world has not been explored enough, and that’s what this play does. It explores the Pittsburgh years of Andy Warhol.”
Looking ahead, Huffman hopes to announce another production for 2024-25, and for the future, plans to continue to produce a Bards From the Burgh selection in the regular season.
“This has been a lot of work on both the board and my part leading up to this moment,” Huffman said. “The primary thing that has been instrumental in being able to have a season is that, through a variety of ways, we have cleared our debt, which was significant. And now we are able to move forward with a very modest season. … It’s the beginning of coming back.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
PICT’s production of Andy Warhol’s Tomato: Preview performance at The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky Street, North Side, is at 8 p.m. September 13. Tickets: https://www.warhol.org/events/andy-warhols-tomato/. Performances at Carnegie Stage, 25 W. Main Street, Carnegie, are Fridays-Sundays, September 20-October 6, plus Monday, September 30. Tickets: https://pictclassictheatre.ludus.com/index.php. Sunday Matinee Talksbacks at Carnegie Stage: A Conversation with Vince Melocchi (September 29); Uncle Andy Stories: The Pittsburgh Years with Don Warhola (October 6); Hidden in Plain Sight: Being Queer in Pittsburgh Before Decriminalization, hosted by Richard Parsakian.
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