By SHARON EBERSON
Repulsing the Monkey is coming home to the South Side.
The play with the memorable name, about the fate of a family-owned tavern on the Slopes, had its first staged reading at the University of Pittsburgh 10 years ago. Michael Eichler‘s Repulsing the Monkey has since been seen on both coasts, at site-specific bars in New York City, San Diego, and Portland Oregon, on its way to its Pittsburgh premiere.
Michael Eichler and director Alex Manalo.
Directed by Alex Manalo, with a cast of eight local performers and designed by an all-Pittsburgh creative team, Repulsing the Monkey comes to the Lillie Theatre, on City Theatre’s South Side campus, March 31-April 6, 2025. Proceeds from tickets go to the South Side Community Council, which is hosting an opening-night reception and talk-back on April 2.
In Repulsing the Monkey, as described on Eichler’s website, siblings Danny and Janey (to be played in Pittsburgh by John Feightner and Kaitlin Kerr) inherit a working-class bar after their parents die in a car crash. They decide to sell it to one of two competing couples – one from New York, the other from Los Angeles. Each has a specific vision for the the bar, while both are hoping to gentrify the neighborhood.
The potential sale causes second thoughts by the brother and sister, as well as a reexamination of their family and neighborhood.
“I’m viewing this as a love letter to old Pittsburgh,” said director Manalo. “We have 90 neighborhoods in this town that were shaped by the people that came before us, and we can and will continue to honor that.”
Associate director Rob James stated, “It’s a show about family at a basic level. What happens when you have to deal with your parents’ legacy? And what kind of legacy are you going to leave for your neighborhood?”
The University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work will host a reception and talk-back (“Community Organizing Social Action”) in addition to the April 5 performance. Playwright Eichler, a Pitt alum (MSW, 1986), helped to develop the Mon Valley Initiative and worked “to establish consensus organizing, a national community organizing model impacting the community development field across the country.”
The Pittsburgh cast includes Hubi McCarthy, Shakirah Stephens, AJ Sansonetti, Adaeze Dozie, Eli Plummer and Mia Kurlfink.
TICKETS AND DETAILS: The Pittsburgh premiere of Repulsing the Monkey is at the City Theatre’s Lillie Theatre, 1300 Bingham Street, South Side, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. (pay what you can preview), April 2 at 6 p.m. (opening night), April 3 and 4 at 7:30 p.m., April 5 at 5 p.m. and April 6 at 2 p.m. Tickets: https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/repulsingthemonkeypgh/play.
PITTSBURGH FRINGE GRAND FINALE
The 2025 Pittsburgh Fringe Festival is going full throttle through Friday, March 29, when the New Hazlett Theater on the North Side is host to the closing event, JOSEPHINE: A Burlesque Cabaret Dream Play, with Tymisha Harris as the first African-American international superstar. The international award-winning, one-woman biographical musical combines cabaret, theater and dance to tell the remarkable story of Josephine Baker. Showtime is 8:30 p.m. Tickets: https://pittsburghfringe.org/events/josephine/.
Also at the Fringe, Cup-A-Jo Productions founder and artistic director Joanna Lowe performs Widow, an autobiographical one-woman show on love, loss, and what comes after, in a piece that blends theater, storytelling and poetry at Mr. Roboto Project, 5106 Penn Avenue, March 25-26 and 28. Times vary; visit https://pittsburghfringe.org/events/widow/.
Visual arts can be viewed throughout the festival, in Bloomfield, Garfield, East Liberty and beyond, including at the Mr. Roboto Project, Pittsburgh Glass Center, and Fringe Central (5020 Penn Avenue), as well as a Point Park University showcase at 312 Boulevard of the Allies, Downtown. More at https://pittsburghfringe.org/ .
NEW FOCUS FOR ‘RICHARD III’
A new adaptation of Richard III gets a stage reading by the Youth Shakespeare Society of Pittsburgh, directed by Izabella Wolfe, with the “focus less on the legendary tyrant and more on the courageous women of the court who suffered, lost, and rebelled against him.” March 29-30, 2025, at the Hillman Performing Arts Center, 423 Fox Chapel Road; run time approximately 90 minutes. https://youthshakespearepgh.org/r3/.
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