By SHARON EBERSON
When actor Dihlon McManne reconnected with a friend over coffee and conversation, he was reminded of a play he had seen more than a decade ago.
In its debut at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, where McManne had worked previously, Years to the Day had been called, “A social satire that’s simply George Bernard Shaw for the 21st Century” by LA Weekly.
“I thought to myself, God, here we are, two guys, we kind of know each other. We weren’t really good friends. But I … was back visiting in LA and I saw [Allen Barton’s] play Years to the Day. And I thought it was fantastic. A two-character play, old friends meet each other, and there’s the story. So I said to my friend, ‘We could do that.’”
McManne, now in Pittsburgh and founder of Irish Riviera Productions, will coproduce and costar in Years to the Day, February 6-23, 2025, at Carnegie Stage. His producing partner in the play are The Beverly Hills Playhouse, with writer-director Allen Barton making his first trip to Pittsburgh for the production.
For his co-conversationalist in the play, he has a newfound friend, the always busy stage and screen actor David Whalen.
When his pal wasn’t able to continue with the project, “I had seen David in shows over the years, and we kind of knew each other, not real well. We’d see each other at auditions, where we were always going up against each other for the same role. He got all of them,” said McManne, sitting across from Whalen, who smiled sheepishly.
Whalen, who had worked 46 weeks last year, was between shows at the Cincinnati Playhouse and Kinetic Theatre’s A Sherlock Carol, when he got the script, and said yes.
Allen was free to come and direct flown in from LA and I found the Carnegie Stage and booked everything. And now, here we are. It’s finally happening,” McManne said.
“It came to me a time that I was going to step away from some live theater and really pursue television and film with my New York agent,” Whalen said. “Then this came up. And first of all, as an actor, it’s hard to say, ‘No,’ especially when something is a challenge. And this play is a challenge for two actors. It requires real stamina. We worked out a way [to fit in my schedule]. but it was the material that definitely said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
It was especially enticing, he added, after playing a Gestapo officer in Rutka: A New Musical and Sherlock Holmes to dive into “something that was right of the moment.”
As he spoke, listening beside him at the Starbucks table was Barton, newly arrived in Pittsburgh.
His play centers on two old friends, Dan and Jeff, who meet for coffee — it’s been eight years to the day since their last in-person meeting. What unfolds is an 80-minute single conversation between them, where the topics of friendship, family, marriage, health, kids and politics intertwine to make them question the nature of friendship, and whether the bond they made in the first week of college can withstand the increasing stress of different opinions across all those topics.
Barton created the show when he, too, had lunch with an old friend named Jeff, whose name is immortalized in the script.
“Because I’m a geek, I keep track of all my appointments. And I was like, ‘How long has it been since I’ve seen Jeff?’ I looked it up, and it had been four years to the day that we were having coffee that morning.”
Their conversation lasted more than two hours, as they verbally volleyed about politics and other subjects, “and we were having our usual disagreements and going back and forth. And in the middle of that I thought, ‘This is actually an interesting play.’”
When he had it on paper, as a full script, his thought was, “It will never go anywhere, because, two people having a single conversation – how interesting can that be?”
Test readings proved otherwise, as did the LA production and a trip to Edinburgh Fringe.
“Before I knew it, over the next five years, it had been done in 12 different cities, including Australia and Greece, with a Greek translation.”
“It’s very touching, very funny, but really emotional, and yes, it has a lot of heart. Allen’s written a phenomenal script. It really is,” said McManne, whose relentless pursuit has brought Barton and the play to Pittsburgh.
Upon his arrival in Pittsburgh, the writer/director was whisked away from the airport directly to Braddock, where barebones productions is hosting Jay Sefton’s play, Unreconciled. And wouldn’t you know it, he wound up catching up with someone he hadn’t seen in a while.
“I saw this really provocative, interesting, well-acted, one-person show, and an old friend of mine from LA … Cotter Smith, he was there, and I was like, ‘Cotter, what are you doing here?’ The last time I saw him was in New York 15 years ago. So it immediately felt like, ‘Wow, there’s this theater community here that’s buzzing … So I’m totally intrigued.”
Barton has adapted only the age range of the play to the cast. It remains timeless by avoiding specificity, or what he calls “adjacent to real time.” It began during the Obama presidency, for example, although he is never mentioned by name. Although a topic of the conversation may be a movie or trend of the moment, there are no titles or names. It is up to the listener to fill in the blanks from their own experiences.
“It’s very interesting hearing the same political fight, which I really didn’t change at all. And now with Trump being the polarizing figure, the left and the right have sort of flipped over on top of themselves,” Barton said.
Among the relatable factors of the premise is, the difference between meeting in person and following someone and reacting to them on social media. In this post-pandemic era, with so much divisiveness and turmoil in the world, can people with different points of view simply pick up where they left off?
Rehearsals with the trio began via Zoom, but “even in these two or three days that we’ve finally been working together in person, it feels like family. It feels like this was meant to happen,” Barton said.
McManne, whose persistence had brought the three men together for the production, noted that there had been “a lot of roadblocks” bringing the play to the Carnegie Stage. Not the least of which was that his director had to travel from LA and his costar, though a Pittsburgh native, makes his home in Virginia.
He noted that the theater has been configured so audience members can feel as if they are overhearing old friends Dan and Jeff – new friends McManne and Whalen – deep in conversation.
“Literally, I could not do it without this guy, because I don’t think any other actor could pull it off,” McManne said of Whalen. “As David said, it’s intense. It takes a lot of intellectual stamina, and even though we’re sitting, it’s physical, we’re not running around, but it’s still … it’s everything.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Years to the Day is presented by Irish Riviera Productions and the Beverly Hills Playhouse, February 6-23, 2025, at Carnegie Stage, 25 W. Main Street, Carnegie. Tickets: Visit https://www.carnegiestage.com/event-details-registration/years-to-the-day-2025-02-06-19-30
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