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[PLAY REVIEWS]
UNHAPPINESS {BY TED HOOVER} TAKE A GROUP of remarkably talented theater artists such as playwright Christopher Durang, director Tracey Brigden and actresses Sheila McKenna and Helena Ruoti, put them to work on one play and what could possibly go wrong? Consider Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, making its Pittsburgh premiere at City Theatre. I know people bitch my reviews are too personal, and what follows could be just my own view … especially considering the show won Tony, Outer Critics, Drama Desk and Critic’s Circle awards for best new play. I have loved every single thing Durang has ever written, but what the hell is this? Two sisters and a brother, all middle-aged, live empty lives; Vanya and Sonia, having taken care of now-dead parents, find ways to piss off each other. Occasionally, their movie-star sister, Masha, flies in (this time with boy-toy Spike in tow) to add misery. They’re mostly unpleasant, in small, peevish ways, and by the second act I was more than over them. As the title indicates, Durang is mining a Chekhovian vein. That may be the problem. Ol’ Anton wrote a number of plays about absolutely nothing except unhappy people being unhappy. Durang has decided to do the same, only updated.
VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE continues through Nov. 3. City Theatre, 1300 Bingham St., South Side. $15-55. 412-431-2489 or www.citytheatrecompany.org
While Chekhov is also famous for promoting stage naturalism, there’s not a more theatrically stylized playwright than Durang. Yet both strains are present in VSMS, often at the same time, and it’s exhausting. Which may explain City Theatre’s production. McKenna, Ruoti and Harry Bouvy, as Vanya, are pushing so hard out there on stage I’m surprised one of them didn’t calve. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen such theater pros working so hard to land a scene. Durang ricochets them around the plot, manufacturing surprisingly easy (for Durang) conflict, and all they can do is hold on. When, after two hours, Durang decides he’s tired and wants to go home, he transforms all three into happily content people, and the show’s over. The cast also includes Amirah Vann, Karl Glusman and Hayley
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 10.23/10.30.2013
{PHOTO COURTESY OF SUELLEN FITZSIMMONS}
From left: Harry Bouvy, Sheila McKenna, Helena Ruoti and Karl Glusman in City Theatre’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Nielsen, all playing their one-note characters with the appropriate note. Or maybe I’m just wrong and the Tony people are right. INF O @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M
FAMILY FEUDS {BY MICHELLE PILECKI} YASMINA REZA’S plays are so irredeemably
French that the best way to enjoy the English translations is to ignore the pretense that these sophisticated but non-litigious people could ever possibly be American. Given that inoculation, the Little Lake Theatre production of Reza’s 2009 Tony Awardwinning God of Carnage (neé 2006’s Le Dieu du carnage) provides an enjoyable if roughriding romp. The premise is like that old joke about a fight between two children that ends up with their parents, trying to handle the situation “maturely,” but falling into a series of insults and assaults. Carnage goes further into recriminations and repercussions, as the two sets of parents realign themselves to battle against everyone else singly and in strange political bedfellowships. Eventually fueled as much by alcohol as animus, the characters scratch and claw away their brittle bourgeois shells to reveal the raw pulp of pettiness, selfishness and inhumanity (or, to look at it another way, extreme humanity). A single set, four actors of middle age — voila, a good piece for small theaters. Yes, be warned that Carnage (translation by Christopher Hampton) is often offensive, and not merely with the usual obscenities. It is a challenge that director Sunny Disney Fitch-
ett and her cast meet well, with occasional brilliance and minor stumbles. (Let us hope that the frequent and distracting malfunctioning wardrobe has been rectified.) None of the characters is sympathetic, but all are interesting. Mary Liz Meyer is appropriately over-the-top as the assailantchild’s mother and insecure second wife of an overbearing lawyer (is that redundant?), solidly played by Art DeConciliis. Jennifer Sinatra embodies the bossy dilettante whose misplaced machinations lead to the stream of carnage. Gregory Caridi seamlessly morphs from nice-guy Everyman to a racist, sexist prig. Props to properties manager Leigh Ann Frohnapfel and to Brad Oberg for his assistance with effluent in that department.
GOD OF CARNAGE continues through Nov. 2. Little Lake Theatre, 500 Lakeside Drive, Canonsburg. $12-20. 724-745-6300 or www.littlelake.org
These are not nice people, and God of Carnage is not a pretty place. But there’s drama, plenty of laughs, and some provocative ruminations on the human condition. I N F O@ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM
EPIC-CURIOUS {BY COLETTE NEWBY} RAGE OF THE Stage Players’ The Picture of Dorian Gray, adapted from Oscar Wilde’s novel by writer/director James Michael Shoberg, is a largely attractive play about largely attractive people doing profoundly ugly things, much like high school. Like