I report in today’s Wall Street Journal on Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre’s production of Alan Ayckbourn’s House & Garden. Here’s an excerpt.
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When is a stunt not really a stunt? When it’s dreamed up by Alan Ayckbourn. In addition to being the most prolific playwright of modern times, Mr. Ayckbourn is also a master of ingenuity, as New York audiences discovered two years ago when London’s Old Vic brought its revival of “The Norman Conquests” to Broadway. But “The Norman Conquests,” three interlocking plays set in different parts of the same country house on a single weekend, is far more than just a piece of consummate cleverness. So is “House & Garden,” a 1999 diptych consisting of two plays that take place simultaneously in the sitting room and garden of the same house and are designed to be performed in adjacent theaters by the same cast, with the actors racing from stage to stage as needed. (Only the audiences stay put.)
“House & Garden” is a high-speed whirligig of theatrical trickery, but as always with Mr. Ayckbourn, there’s more to it than that. In between the riotous farce-style sequences, he paints a bleak portrait of the dilapidated state of modern marriage as seen through the eyes of two unhappy couples, and the funnier the jokes, the darker the shadows. It makes for an impressive package–but one that can only be performed by a company that has access to two stages on the same site.
That’s where Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre comes in. Founded in 1996, PICT operates out of the University of Pittsburgh’s Stephen Foster Memorial, a purpose-built theatrical complex that looks like a Gothic-style church. It contains two houses, the 454-seat Charity Randall Theatre and 153-seat Henry Heymann Theatre, that are connected by a backstage spiral staircase, making it possible for PICT to mount “House & Garden” with relative ease. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, but PICT has taken the measure of “House & Garden” and put together a cast whose members are equal to the challenge of conveying its technical and emotional complexities….
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Read the whole thing here.

“Our century is probably more religious than any other. How could it fail to be, with such problems to be solved? The only trouble is that it has not yet found a God it can adore.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Jan. 8, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren’t actively prudish, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, closes July 24, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:

• The Front Page (comedy, PG-13, extended through July 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN PITTSFIELD, MASS.:

• Guys and Dolls (musical, G, closes July 16, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• A Little Journey (drama, G, extended through July 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• The Motherf**ker with the Hat (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes July 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• The Importance of Being Earnest (high comedy, G, just possible for very smart children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN CHICAGO:

• Porgy and Bess (operatic musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

“A sense of the common fallibility of all flesh makes us kin. No man is lovable who is invincible.”
Neville Cardus, Good Days

“Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann,” a 1992 documentary narrated by Philip Bosco:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“Whatever may be said in favour of the Victorians, it is pretty generally admitted that few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.”
P.G. Wodehouse, Summer Moonshine

The view from our window in Cape May, New Jersey, is Hopperesque:

FRIDAY Up at eight to pack for an afternoon flight out of Hartford, whose airport is an hour’s drive from our place in the Connecticut woods. Mrs. T is a sleep-late-then-pack-fast kind of gal, whereas I have obsessive travel-related tendencies reinforced by years and years of making deadlines. Whenever two such folk set up house together, it necessarily leads to a certain amount of tension, albeit of a productive kind: Mrs. T and I get everywhere on time, then relax and enjoy ourselves. The only friction occurs in the frenzied hour just before we hit the road, during which glares and harsh words are exchanged, followed by an on-time departure (though never a minute early!) and profuse apologies.

It took us well over an hour to drive from Pittsburgh International Airport to our downtown hotel. Nobody told us that President Obama was giving a speech in Pittsburgh that day, or that the Secret Service was planning to seal off the main road into town. Miranda, our trusty GPS, got us to the hotel via a circuitous alternate route, but a whole lot of other people must have decided to take the same route, since it, too, was jammed. Fortunately, Richard Strauss’ seraphically genial oboe concerto was playing on the radio and the University Center Holiday Inn has superior room service, so no one got killed or maimed.

SATURDAY We slept in, then lunched at Essie’s Original Hot Dog Shop, popularly known as the Dirty O, which is famous for serving you what you think are more French fries than you can possibly eat–until you try one. Said Mrs. T: “These are the best fries I’ve ever had!” As for the main course, I can do no better than cite Paul Lukas’ 2002 survey of America’s top dogs:

While the Steel City’s dogs have no regional quirks, the Original’s griddle-grilled beauties have one thing going for them: flavor. The franks’ tight skins snap as you bite into them, resulting in an explosion of beefy goodness. This is not just a great hot dog; this is a great piece of meat. And happily, although I do not get to Pittsburgh as often as I would like, my standard order at the Original is one I have had lots of practice delivering elsewhere: “Gimme two, with mustard.”

He forgot the chili, but otherwise that’s a recipe for bliss. (Don’t forget to specify brown mustard–it’s the finishing touch.)

After lunch we went to the Carnegie Museum of Art, one of the country’s finest second-tier encyclopedic museums. While it can’t rival Fort Worth’s Kimbell or the old Cleveland Museum for sheer consistency, the Carnegie contains its share of show-stoppers. I think that Rocks at the Seashore, a breathtaking early Cézanne, was my favorite piece, with Joan Mitchell’s Low Water (Mrs. T’s pick) running it a close second. But there was plenty of competition, including a first-class Chardin still life and an astonishingly vivid portrait by Whistler of the great Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate.

In the evening we paid our first visit to Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, a company that I’ve been meaning to check out for the past few seasons but was unable to shoehorn into my summer schedule until now. PICT is performing House & Garden, one of Alan Ayckbourn’s conceptual extravaganzas, two plays which, like The Norman Conquests, take place in different parts of the same house but are designed to be performed simultaneously in adjacent theaters, with the members of the cast racing from stage to stage as needed. PICT, whose two stages are connected by a spiral staircase, is ideally suited to such an undertaking, so I decided that the time had finally come to spend a couple of nights in Pittsburgh.

This, needless to say, is one of the signal advantages of being the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, which encourages me to criss-cross America in search of noteworthy shows to review. Were it not for the Journal‘s unique commitment to regional theater, I’d probably never have gotten a chance to see House & Garden. It was done in Chicago, Manhattan, and Rochester shortly after its 1999 premiere at Ayckbourn’s own Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, but since then the only professional staging of which I’ve heard was by Dallas’ Theatre Three in 2008.

(To be continued)

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Pauline Oostenrijk, Neeme Järvi, and the Hague Philharmonic perform the first movement of Richard Strauss’ Oboe Concerto, composed in 1945: