2025 Season Includes ‘Hangmen,’ the Return of ‘A Sherlock Carol,’ and a Sam Tsoutsouvas Salon Performance
Of the titles Andrew Paul’s Kinetic Theatre is bringing to Pittsburgh in 2025, the first, Embers, is least likely to evoke nods of recognition.
Opening at Carnegie Stage on May 15, 2025, Embers was adapted by Christopher Hampton from the Polish novella by Sandor Marai, The drama, produced in London with Jeremy Irons in 2006, gets its Pittsburgh premiere directed by Paul and starring frequent collaborator Sam Tsoutsouvas, Broadway actor (The Elephant Man) and Stratford Festival veteran Jack Wetherall, and Susie McGregor-Laine. The play by
Paul, the producing artistic director of Kinetic, also has announced a season including Martin McDonagh’s Olivier Award-winning Hangmen, salon performances of Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, and the return of David Whalen in A Sherlock Carol.
Admittedly, as an opening salvo to a season, Embers is not an easy watch. But Paul has faith in Kinetic’s audience to go where his taste for emotional and historical resonance can lead them.
The play recounts the reunion of friends from a distance of 40 years. In an 18th-century Hungarian castle, Henrik, a retired general, awaits the arrival of his childhood friend, Konrad, who mysteriously disappeared from Vienna following a fateful hunting trip. It asks the questions: What happened between them so many years before? Where has Konrad been for all these years? And will their long-awaited reunion resolve the inner conflicts that have haunted Henrik’s life?
Admittedly, there are no easy answers.
And did I mention the ghost?
“The serious theater crowd in Pittsburgh will like [Embers] because it’s an interesting piece of theater,” Paul concluded. “And I think if we do it well, I think it will be very atmospheric. And I got Andy Ostrowski to do the lighting, because the lighting designer is really pivotal in this play. He’s got to create ghosts on stage. He’s got to make a forest come to life for a flashback.”
It is clear that Henrik and Konrad are now coming at the world from completely different points of view. From novella to play, said Paul, their story “serves as sort of a microcosm for the entire fall and decline of an empire, and a whole way of life. Because the one guy represents this sort of nobility and valor and all these things that seem outdated now. And the other guy is a modern man who sort of self-made himself and reinvented himself. And so they’re completely contrasted.”
Paul has worked with Tsoutsouvas in, he estimates, 10 Kinetic shows and perhaps a dozen more dating back to PICT. Their shorthand is borne of respect and friendship
“Sam, he’s a very serious and studious actor. He and Dave [Whalen] are kind of similar in this way,” Paul said. “They show up at the first rehearsal, and they have already spent weeks studying the play, and they usually know the lines at the first rehearsal. He doesn’t even look at the script at the readthrough. He is already locked in and ready to play.”
Paul has been known to reach across borders to cast actors, but it was Tsoutsouvas who recruited his friend, Jack Wetherall.
The actors playing the leads are good friends, while, like their character descriptions, they are a study in physical contrasts, noted Paul, saying “Jack is completely opposite to Sam … really tall and angular and very sort of graceful and just, he’s like a throwback artist. He reminds me of Brian Bedford, actually.”
The Canadian-born, New York-based Wetherall played Orlando in a 1978 Stratford Festival production of As You Like It, that included Bedford and Maggie Smith.
“Sam liked the play and I was like, well, let’s just read it in your apartment in New York and get some other actors. And he got Jack, and he got a Tony Award-winner to read the third part that Susie’s playing. And we sat around in his apartment and read the play. I thought it read great, so I was like, ‘Let’s find time to do that.’”
It wasn’t easy. Besides acting and directing, Wetherall is an educator and coach, most recently teaching Advanced Acting (Shakespeare: Text Study & Performance) at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York.
They at first had trouble locking down a time for a play with dark themes, that might be more fitting in another season.
Spring 2025 became the earliest Paul was able to lock into place the acting trio and creative team.
“The thought occurred to me that it’s more of a wintry play, but it’s actually set in the summer,” he said with a smile.
It had been mentioned numerous times that Embers and the season might not be the perfect match – “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” and all that sort of thing.
In Embers, there is a love triangle and a betrayal, and two men, one an artistic soul, the other bound by polite society, who were best friends.
“You get the sense that the sort of way of life that the central character that Sam plays is ending, literally on this very night,” Paul said. “This whole way of life is over, but he can’t live in a world that doesn’t have this sort of system. It has elements of Beckett and Strindberg, so it’s got all these weird classical elements that I love, but it’s …,” he paused. “It’s not an easy watch. You have to just take it all in and recognize the complexities, because …”
Paul paused again, then resolved to sum up Embers, without giving too much away: “It doesn’t have any easy solutions. It’s kind of like life.”
KINETIC THEATRE 2025 SEASON
May 15-25, 2025: Embers, adapted by Christopher Hampton from the novel by Sandor Marai. Pittsburgh premiere at Carnegie Stage, 25 W. Main Street, Carnegie. Cast: Sam Tsoutsouvas, Jack Wetherall, and Susie McGregor-Laine. Tickets: visit https://www.kinetictheatre.org/
August 7-24, 2025: Hangmen by Martin McDonagh. Pittsburgh Premiere Pittsburgh premiere at Carnegie Stage, 25 W. Main Street, Carnegie. Directed by Andrew Paul. Cast: Simon Bradbury and David Whalen.
October 2025: Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street by Herman Melville, adapted and performed by Sam Tsoutsouvas. A “Salon Performance” directed by Andrew Paul. Dates and venue, TBA.
December 11-21, 2025: A Sherlock Carol by Mark Shanahan. Directed by Andrew Paul. Cast includes David Whalen as Sherlock Holmes. Venue TBA.Subscriptions available now by contacting Kinetic Theatre via email at kinetictheatreinfo@gmail.com or phone at 412-225-9145. Further details: https://kinetictheatre.org.
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