Category: The Shaker

by Mike “Buzz” Buzzelli, ‘Burgh Vivant.

A stoned out lawyer, Dixon (Quentin Mare), and his frazzled, uptight wife, Pam (Lisa Velten Smith), struggle with their daughter’s unusual decision in Carly Mensch’s “Oblivion.”

It’s become a postmodern trope; the only way to rebel against iconoclastic parents is to go in the opposite direction and become more traditional. The plot has been around since “Family Ties.” In this case, Dixon and Pam’s daughter, Julie (Julia Warner), wants to be baptized Christian.

The aforementioned daughter has been sneaking off to a Korean Baptist Church with her bestie, Bernard (Christopher Larkin). The play opens when Pam suspects that Julie didn’t go off to a trip to Wesleyan University as planned. Secretly, she and Bernard went off to a church retreat where ate a pancake breakfast, prayed, and learned wood-carving. Her parents suspect that she was up to much more devious activities. It turns out that said parents would have preferred that she went off on a drug-filled orgy instead. When the secret is finally revealed, it shatters the family’s domestic bliss, sending Pam into a total tizzy. To be fair, most of the domestic bliss between Dixon and Pam comes after a few puffs off a joint.

Once the cat is out of the bag, Pam finds other cats in the bag; unlocking a secret about her spouse that sends her into Tizzy Number Two.

P.S. There’s also a strange subplot about Bernard’s infatuation with late film critic Pauline Kael. It’s odd because Bernard knows intimate details of her life, except that she passed away in 2001 (it’s the first thing that comes up when you Google her).

“Oblivion” is a comedy, and, in the traditional form, it is. It’s just not laugh out loud funny. The play does pose a few very interesting questions. Is spirituality an archaic notion in the 21^st Century? Can God give someone a sense of fulfillment, if He can’t be seen or heard? If you have an idol and a laptop, shouldn’t you know if your idol is living or dead? Sorry, the Pauline Kael thing is hard to get past (probably because I’ve also worshipped at her altar).

There’s one other niggling thing that could be fixed in a rewrite. Julie doesn’t seem to be learning anything about forgiveness at the Korean Baptist Church. She rails against her mom in the entire first act. It makes it easy to sidle up to Pam’s POV. She talks a lot about Jesus, but walks around with deep-seated anger at her mom. What is that church teaching her?

It seems “Oblivion” was written for film or television. While brisk to-the-point scenes are appreciated over lengthy, wordy ones, the scene changes are overwhelming. Director Stuart Carden could have simplified the movement a bit, especially since the actors are pulling double-duty as stage hands. It’s like aerobic exercises with a sofa and coffee table instead of barbells.

Luckily, these furniture movers happen to be extraordinary actors. Carden cast it well. Mare hands in a stellar performance as the clueless but caring father, Dixon. He also has the best lines in the play. Larkin is delightful as the budding auteur, Bernard. Warner was perfectly cast (there’s a “Julie & Julia” joke in there somewhere, but I just can’t get at it).

Though it was tough to sympathize with Pam, Velten Smith won me over with a simple gesture in the final scene.

Side note: Pam also had the best wardrobe. Cheers to Costume designer Angela M. Vesco for making look comfortable yet elegant.

Though it had a lot of moving parts, the set is a masterpiece from Gianni Downs. On Tuesday’s show, a few audience members were so enamored of the bevy of trinkets on stage that they wandered up onto the set during intermission and gawked at the gewgaws up close. Luckily, they returned to their seats before the ushers escorted them off.

There’s a lot of moving parts in “Oblivion,” metaphorically as well, and they do come together in a satisfying way. However, like Julie after her baptism, I stood up and said, “Is that it?” The City Theatre has set unusually high standards, and, because of that, I was expecting something greater.

(“Oblivion” runs until April 26 at the City Theatre, 1300 Bingham Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15203. For more information, call (412) 431-4400, or go to www.citytheatrecompany.org)

-MB.

by Mike “Buzz” Buzzelli, ‘Burgh Vivant.

Endless Lawns: The Green, Green Grass of Home

In Anthony McKay’s “Endless Lawns” we learn quickly that the mighty have fallen. Twin sisters living in a squalid, dilapidated home on the outskirts of town are far from their former glory as debutante daughters of a famous movie star. Their old home, a mansion in the hoity-toity High Chimney’s neighborhood, has been destroyed, plowed over, and turned into new development. There’s a little more green than gray in this garden, but a sharp observer will note the reference.

Torch (Laurie Klatscher) and her fraternal twin, Flo (Cary Anne Spear), are living paycheck-to-paycheck with menial jobs; Torch at the K-Mart, Flo at a local flower shop. It seems their not-so-dearly departed dad willed the family fortune to his mistress and left his girls out in the cold.

Flo is having a difficult time letting go of her former life. She was once an actor on stage and screen, yet she couldn’t escape her father’s shadow. In these lean years, she’s taken up her dad’s favorite sport; drinking. Torch is having an easier time accepting their new lives, and things are looking less dismal for her. She believes her drinking days are behind her and regularly attends AA meetings, much to her sister’s chagrin.

On a lovely summer evening, Ray (Jason McCune), Torch’s boyfriend and boss, pulls a ring out of his pocket and pops the question. Torch answers him with a resounding yes and shower of kisses.

You can almost feel the sword of Damocles dangling above her head at that brief moment of sheer joy. First, Flo isn’t keen on the idea and pries them apart with acidic bon mots. Then, Graham (Mark D. Staley), Torch’s old flame, alights onto the scene.

Graham “accidentally” (big, giant air quotes) spills a thirty-year old secret in front of Torch’s fiancé, Ray, and all hell breaks loose. While the men are jostling for her affection, Torch slips into the abyss.

“Endless Lawns” has a small but powerful cast. It’s a quartet of charismatic, talented performers.

Spear is mesmerizing as the forlorn Flo. Somehow she maintains her likability after spewing out verbal assaults on all of the other characters. There’s a lovely moment when years of seething resentment falls, quite literally, out of her. She recounts a story about a film festival in her father’s honor. It’s a hilarious. The tale not only knocks her down a peg or two, but offers an illuminating glimpse into the power of forgiveness.

Klatscher’s character is even more likable, but when Torch fails, the failure is epic. You want to jump up on stage and stop her from every bad decision she makes. Her performance is flawless. Though, Torch might have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She utters the line “I’m tired” three or four times through the course of the play.

McCune’s Ray is a lovable schlub. A hapless K-Mart manager with a penchant for a beautiful girl from his youth. His romantic rival, Graham, is a capital D Douchebag, but he’s played with equal parts pomposity and vulnerability by Staley.

The play only stumbles, figuratively and literally, when the characters get drunk. It’s difficult to act inebriated. While director Gregory Lehane gets terrific performances from his actors, the drunken scenes could use a bit more work (short of actually plying them with copious amounts of alcohol, I’m not sure what he could do).

Playwright Anthony McKay’s “Endless Lawns” balances light and darkness like Caravaggio. Just like the Italian painter the light looks brightest against the prevailing darkness; chiaroscuro played out metaphorically.

McKay’s script sparkles with humor. However, he really put the endless in “Endless Lawns.” The play, like the unmown lawn in the story, could use a trim. However, the sisters are the saving grace. McKay creates two intriguing twins. Therein lies a dichotomous problem; the story of the twins is captivating, even though the play seemed a bit long, I still wanted more of them (probably because Klatscher and Spear play them so skillfully).

Even when things seem bleak, McKay shines plenty of sunlight on “Endless Lawns.”

(“Endless Lawns” runs from March 26 through April 12 in The Rep’s Studio Theatre, Pittsburgh Playhouse)

-MB.

by Mike “Buzz” Buzzelli, ‘Burgh Vivant.

Going to the Maker Theater is always an adventure. It’s a tiny theater tucked under a bridge in a dark Post-Industrial section of Ellsworth Avenue. It’s considered Shadyside, but it’s really East Liberty Adjacent. Attending a play or improvisation comedy show there reminds me of seeing a play in the East Village. It’s a bit funky, wild and slightly dangerous.

The street isn’t very well lit and the darkness makes it the perfect place for 12 Peers new one man show, “Lovecraft’s Monsters.”

Playwright and actor David Crawford wants you to understand the life and times of writer H. P. Lovecraft, an iconic figure in the horror oeuvre. He created terrifying creatures, most notably is Cthulhu, a beast god that his part octopus, dragon and man. The author’s stories were influential to many horror writers, Stephen King often cites Lovecraft as an early influence.

His tale is sad one, mostly brought on by his own inability and inaction. There’s a lot stacked up against him. Lovecraft’s father was committed to an asylum, his mother was overbearing, and he was traumatized by night terrors. Those terrors also became fictionalized subjects for his work.

The writer was also an unabashed racist who left his wife and was unable to earn a living. Lovecraft writes about monsters, but might actually be the monster. Crawford wants us to like the subject, but he isn’t a likable character. A more honest depiction would have been much more effective.

The good natured actor bounds onto the near barren set, and tells us his plan to expound on the life Howard Phillips Lovecraft to the audience. There are a few good jokes. Unfortunately, some of them use Lovecraft’s racism as a punchline. “I liked New York at first, but there are far too many immigrants there.” It’s funny, true and ultimately sad.

The play starts slow, but begins to pick up steam. At times, Crawford portrays an omniscient narrator, at other times, he’s the author himself, but when he immerses himself into the characters, the show starts jumping.

The last twenty minutes of “Lovecraft’s Monsters,” are riveting. Crawford is captivating as he recounts Lovecraft’s first published story, “The Shadows of Innsmouth.” He inhabits the role of the narrator, a student on an antiquarian tour of New England who spends the night in a village overrun by demonic sea creatures. A local resident, the town drunk (deftly performed by Crawford), tells him about how the creatures are inter-breeding with humans and performing ritualistic sacrifices. The young man must run for his life to avoid being killed by the evil beings. The final moments of the show are gripping.

Horror is a subjective experience, and while Lovecraft broke ground in the genre, in modern parlance, the premise seems silly. In retrospect, a squadron of marauding merman chasing a man through a seaside town sounds ridiculous, but Crawford was able to pull it off.

The show is at its best when Crawford is dramatically unfolding Lovecraft’s fiction. However, the show is bogged down by a lot of non-fiction. The beginning of the show is mired in too many facts about the man. It’s comes off as a lecture, because it’s more tell than show.

A story about an author plagued by myriad insecurities isn’t as interesting as the stories he creates. Crawford’s show could be greatly improved if he concentrated more on the work and less on the man.

(Lovecraft’s Monsters runs March 12-21. All shows at The Maker Theater, 5950 Ellsworth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. Thursday-Saturday, 8 pm. Tickets $17 online, $20 at the door/$15 with a student ID. There is a special pay-what-you-can performance on Monday, March 16, at 8 pm)

-MB.

Review by Mike “Buzz” Buzzelli, ‘Burgh Vivant.

It’s a shame August Wilson is no longer with us; 2015 is shaping up to be a great year for the late playwright, especially here in Pittsburgh. In January, the August Wilson Center for African American Culture reopened its doors. In February, a documentary about his life, “The Ground on Which I Stand,” debuted on PBS. This month, “How I Learned What I Learned,” August Wilson’s auto-biographical play opened at the Pittsburgh Public’s O’Reilly Theater.

“How I Learned What I Learned” is the final play in the ten-play “American Century Cycle,” and the last play Wilson wrote. It’s a meditation on the playwright’s early years living in Pittsburgh’s Hill District.

In Seattle in 2003, Todd Kreidler and August Wilson came together and collaborated on “How I Learned What I Learned.” Wilson was going to star in the play, but it had to be reimagined with an actor in the role of August Wilson (the playwright died in 2005).

Eugene Lee portrays Wilson as a feisty, funny, but very human man. Wilson doesn’t impart wisdom, he tells you what he doesn’t know, and by so doing, we learn his true wisdom. There are a few moments of humblebrag, but mostly it’s the story of a modest, modern genius who uses his righteous indignation and humor to come to grips with society’s ills.

The author was self-taught. He is the only person to be given a high school diploma from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, where Wilson learned much of what he learned. The rest he learned on the streets of Wylie, Centre, Bedford and Crawford. His anecdotes and musings flow from haphazard recollections into a story of self-actualization. It is sheer poetry, and Lee inhabits the role gracefully. He commands the stage.

Its clear Kreidler is co-conceived the project, because it is an intimate portrayal. The one hundred minute play whisks by speedily. The play is not a collection of facts about the artist, but about his humanity. Luckily, if you’re yearning to know more about August Wilson, there is the aforementioned documentary, The Ground on Which I Stand,” to guide you.

Lighting Designer Thom Weaver, Scenic and Projection Designer David Gallo and Sound Designer Dan Moses Schreier created a workspace for the play that is both grim, gritty and yet simultaneously joyous and hopeful, a flower poking through a cracked, city sidewalk. Scheier must know that the clickety-clack of the typewriter makes every writer’s heart pitter patter. Gall even picks a nice Courier font for the words projected on the wall.

Not to spoil it, but sound and visual arts come together at the end of the play. It is a moving tribute to the playwright and his work.

The Pittsburgh Public is halfway through their season, and, like two trains running, they’re picking up steam. Skip your piano lesson, and grab a jitney for “How I Learned What I Learned.”

HOW I LEARNED WHAT I LEARNED plays through April 5th at Pittsburgh Public Theater, www.ppt.org

-MB.