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“Underneath the Lintel” at 12 Peers Theater

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by wkarons in Theatre Review

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12 Peers Theater

A Baedeker’s Travel Guide is returned to a Dutch library 113 years overdue. The librarian who finds the volume in the returned book slot – a fussy, rule-bound man if ever there was one – is, at first, only astonished by the audacity of the person who returned it surreptitiously to the slot instead of facing the consequences at the front desk! But as he digs into the files to find out who to dun for the “fine of his life,” The Librarian (for we do not know him by any other moniker) begins to unravel a mystery about another man’s life that quickly has profound effects on his own, sending him on a journey around the world, out of his comfort zone, and into a realm of physical and existential agitation he never could have imagined experiencing.

That’s as much of a “plot summary” I would want to give about Glen Berger’s play Underneath the Lintel (12 Peers Theater, at Pittsburgh Playwrights) without spoiling its charming and thought-provoking effect, which depends to a certain extent on taking a journey into the unknown with its solitary main character. Structured as an eighty-minute lecture-presentation by the Librarian (Randy Kovitz) to an imagined audience (us) brought to the venue for “An Impressive Presentation of Lovely Evidences” (whatever that is), the play traces, in retrospect, the discoveries he makes as he follows the trail of mysterious clues left by the patron who originally checked out the Baedeker. What the “evidences” eventually point to test the limits of belief and require a leap of faith which the rational, reality-based Librarian may or may not be fully prepared to take (and he is understanding of our skepticism if we are not prepared to take that leap, either). As the Librarian gets further and further from his safe, insular existence, parallels between his own life and that of the figure he suspects to be his mystery patron start to emerge: both are risk-averse, opting for comfortable, small lives; both hesitate to make a brave and bold choice at a decisive moment; and in both cases, the cowardly choice eventually results in a lonely, anonymous, unmoored life. Searching for the borrower of the book forces the Librarian not only to confront past mistakes, but to open himself to adventure, to the hazards of chance, and to the terrifying, exhilirating scope of existence – along with the awful, inescapable fact of its finiteness.

Advertising materials for the show describe it as “an existential detective story,” and that’s an apt description, but you shouldn’t let the word “existential” scare you off.  Kovitz’s Librarian is endearing and believable as a naïve provincial propelled by curiosity into both the wider world and the deepest of inquiries, and he wrings a lot of comedy out of the character’s pedantry and fuddy-duddiness. Moreover, by infusing an almost child-like quality into the character, Kovitz keeps the discoveries fresh and avoids letting the more philosophical sections of the play get too heavy, which is certainly a risk in the material. There are a lot of “big questions” posed by the play – of the “why are we here?” variety – but Kovitz’s Everyman diffidence and innocence helps give us the courage to open ourselves to those questions, even if the answers are as elusive as the man for whom the Librarian continues to search.

 

Your Tatler has been a busy audience member and blogger this past week: four shows and posts in the space of five days! Looking ahead on the calendar, there’s the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh’s “French Kiss” concert on February 14th & 16th, which features Requiems by Fauré and Duruflé, exquisitely beautiful music: don’t miss it! And barebones is opening A Steady Rain, which I hope I’ll be able to catch early in its run (and blog about here).

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Looking forward to…

12 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by wkarons in Theatre Review

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January and February are shaping up to be busy months for the Tatler, and I thought I’d share what I’m looking forward to in the next few weeks. I don’t know if I’ll have time to blog about all these shows after I’ve seen them, and several will have very short runs, so I may not get a post up before the show closes.  So I thought a little preview article about all the exciting theater and dance coming up was in order.

CorningKnife

Photo Frank Walsh

This week, CorningWorks premieres its new piece, Recipes Our Mothers Gave Us. I liked the wry, understated quality of their Life and Death of Little Finn, and besides having one of the most arresting publicity photos I’ve seen in awhile, this show promises gourmet food in addition to thought-provoking dance by a company of artists who have more life experience to share than the average dance company. Rumor has it opening night is almost sold out; it runs Weds. Jan 15 to Sun. Jan 19.

FLIGHT-NEW-small

I’m also catching Flight: A Crane’s Story this weekend at the University of Pittsburgh.  This puppet show, by Heather Henson (daughter of Jim Henson), is an environmental fable told through the perspective of an orphaned migrating crane.  I don’t know a lot about it, but I’ve always loved puppet theater, and plays that address ecological issues are one of my major interests, so…I have high hopes for this production.  Runs Jan. 17-19 at the Charity Randall Theater.

Next week, City Theater opens The Mountaintop, Katori Hall’s new play that imagines Martin Luther King’s last night on earth. It was a play that stirred some controversy when it opened (because it imagines a less saintly MLK than he has grown to be in the collective imagination), and I’m thrilled that City is bringing it to Pittsburgh. It opens Jan. 24, and I’m already getting a little weary of going to the theater’s websites to grab the performance dates, so my gracious readers will need to follow that link to see when it closes for themselves, and accept my apology for my laziness. Also currently playing at City is Tami Dixon’s absolutely wonderful South Side Stories. I actually didn’t see this show right away when it first played because I was under the mistaken impression that, being a relative newcomer to Pittsburgh, I wasn’t really the audience for it. But Dixon is also an “outsider”, and her take on Pittsburgh is generous, loving, and hilarious. I finally caught it at the end of its run last year, and didn’t blog about it because it was about to close; since it’s open again, here’s my quick and dirty review: Dixon is a charming, intelligent performer, the writing is sharp and moving, the design pulls the narrative along, and there’s a really good reason this show is an audience favorite. Here’s a little taste:

The Public Theatre will mount a production of Company at the end of the month; opening January 31. I think I’ve confessed on this blog that I’ve never been a huge musical theater junkie, so it won’t surprise regular readers to learn that I’ve managed to walk a half century on this earth without seeing a production of this play. I love being able to see such established chestnuts with fresh eyes; it’ll be interesting to see what this play from 1970 has to say to the twenty-first century.  Later this spring, the Public is presenting a one-person show An Iliad, adapted by Lisa Peterson & Denis O’Hare; my curiosity is very piqued about that one.

Quantum Theatre opens J. T. Rogers’s Madagascar on Jan. 31 at the Carlyle downtown.  I know nothing about this play at this point beyond what I’ve gleaned from the publicity materials, which promise a “a haunting story of a mysterious disappearance that changes three lives forever.” I’m game for whatever Quantum wants to throw our way, though. Sheila McKenna, one of my favorite performers in town, is directing the show, and she’s cast a group of actors I’d be happy to see in anything.

Also at the end of the month, the REP premieres E. M. Lewis’s new play Heads, which is about four hostages in a war zone. I produced a reading of Lewis’s earlier play Song of Extinction, which I found moving, complicated, and highly thought-provoking, so I’m excited that we’ve got the opportunity to see her newest play. That opens Jan. 31, too. And later in the spring (mark your calendar!) they are offering the Pittsburgh premiere of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Lynn Nottage’s new play, directed by my colleague, Tome Cousins.

That last weekend of the month is also the weekend of the School of Drama’s annual Playground Festival of New Work, which is always a highlight of the year. Not sure how I’m going to squeeze everything in.

February is also looking busy. At the beginning of the month 12 Peers Theater is mounting a production of Underneath the Lintel, a play by Glen Berger that traces the efforts of a Librarian to crack the mystery of a book returned 113 years after its due date. This one person show features Randy Kovitz, who has done two other solo performances in the past decade here in Pittsburgh, plus a slew of fine indy film and tv work here and elsewhere. That show opens Feb. 5 and runs most of the month.

Then there’s the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh’s interweaving of the Fauré and Duruflé Requiems in its A Mass Affair: French Kiss concert over Valentine’s weekend.  How much more romantic can things get? The music is achingly beautiful.

At the School of Drama, we’re opening The Wild Party and having the first of three Centennial celebrations in late February; the play opens February 21, and the brilliant Stacy Wolf (Princeton U.) will be on campus February 27 to give a University Lecture on “Divas, Darlings, and Dames:  Women in Broadway Musicals of the 1960s.” How cool is that?

Meantime, when I’m not blogging about the great theater work I see here in Pixburgh, I also continue to plug away at the translation of Lessing’s Hamburg Dramaturgy; we’re publishing it online as the essays are finalized. Ten are on the website, but as of this writing I’m halfway through drafting Essay 40.

See yinz at the theater…

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