On the Aisle: Cuckolds, Angels, August Wilson and Cognitive Studies

THE UNIVERSITIES SHINE

Sad to say, CMU and Pitt are entering the second weekend of two-week runs -- sad, because both shows have something special to offer, with so little time left to see it. I'm going to have reviews in Friday's paper, but here's a note to give you an extra day's notice to get to see either or both.

CMU is doing Edward Ravenscroft's "The London Cuckolds" (1681), one of the less-frequently staged Restoration comedies, but a perfect epitome of the type: older husbands, young wives, randy young cavaliers, witty servants, mistaken identities, etc., etc. It hardly has a brain in its pretty little head, unless you count the class struggle of wealthy merchants (middle-class) vs. impecunious, devil-may-care aristocrats, with the author firmly on the side of the latter. The battle is over the women, but not to fear, the women manage to exercise much of the power themselves, taking lovers only because that's their whim.

(Pictured in the photo by Joshua Franzos are Steffi Garrard and Adam Barrie as one of the wives and her would-be seducer.)

Anyway, what really distinguishes director Don Wadsworth's "London Cuckolds" is the production, in which experienced faculty actors play the three booby husbands and nubile undergraduates play the wives, lovers and servants. The costumes and stage designs are sumptuous. If you like stylish farce, you'll have a grand time. I did.

Pitt also has two faculty pros stiffening an undergraduate cast, but the play is a very different thing entirely. "Angels in America" -- specifically Part 1, "Millennium Approache" -- is a very great play about big issues like bigotry, culture wars, spiritual hypocrisy and what playwright Tony Kushner sees as the right-wing perversion of democracy.

The Pitt undergraduates aren't generally as talented or well-trained as those at CMU, because Pitt's theater major is a liberal arts program, while CMU's is a professional conservatory. But these Pitt students honor the play with their work, and the play itself reveals as much emotion and intellectual complexity as it did when it first appeared in 1993. And pro Doug Mertz is a robust, scary Roy Cohn. (Pro Elena Alexandratos gets more scope in part 2, "Perestroika," which Pitt will stage in April.)

As to Point Park, it wheels into view this weekend with "Parade," the serious musical that explores the fate of Leo Frank, lynched in 1913 Georgia out of anti-Jewish prejudice, for a murder he didn't commit.  

August Wilson monologues

This Sunday will be the first August Wilson Monologue Contest for high school students. The public is invited -- it's at the Pittsburgh Playhouse at 6 p.m. Winners get to go on to a national finals with contestants from other cities.

Symposium on Cognitive Studies

In connection with "Angels," the Pitt Theater Department is hosting a three-day conference in Theatre and Cognitive Studies, to many sessions of which the public is invited. The best bets are the keynote speech in the Randall Theatre on "Cognition and the Arts" (Fri., 4 p.m.); a panel on "Cognitive Criticism" in the Heymann Theatre in which three responders will apply their analytical tools to this production of "Angels," with me as moderator (Sat. 9:30 a.m.); and a roundtable discussion of all the issues raised (Sunday, 11 a.m.). No, I don't know what cognitive criticism is, either, but I expect I'll find out.