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Yo WTF'ers!

PITTSBURGHERS! YA GOTS TO SEE DIS PLAY!

OK, I don't get out much. If I do get out it usually means I'm doing stand-up. Which doesn't really count 'causer I'm working. But last night I got out. I went to Bricolage on Liberty Ave. and saw an explosively fantastic hysterically gruesome bizarre enigma wrapped in a riddle covered in lamb's blood surrounded by sexual tension. It was freaking awesome!

I'm no theater critic so I can't pontificate on all the theatrical nuances. The play is called "Hunter Gatherers" by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb. Here, from an actual critic, is a synopsis of the set-up:

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/regional/la/la286.html
You go to the butcher and buy some lamb for dinner. Practically speaking, there isn't a whole lot of difference between you buying the lamb from a butcher and you slaughtering the lamb yourself (it certainly doesn't make any difference to the lamb) . But buying the lamb from a butcher (think about that word) is civilized, while killing it yourself, well, isn't. Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's play, Hunter Gatherers (in its LA premiere) begins by crossing that line, when a normal, everyday couple, unable to get a fresh enough lamb for a special dinner, slaughters a lamb in their normal, everyday living room. And once that line has been crossed, Nachtrieb's dark comedy gamely sees just how far it can go.

It's a dinner party among two couples, four old friends. The hosts buy a live lamb, kill it themselves, and that's when the fun begins.

Tressa Glover (seen here in a previous effort "Wonder Of The World"

- that's Gab next to her)

is enigmatically trippy in the role of the reluctant wife who doesn't enjoy the lamb slaughter as much as her oozing-with-crazy husband, played with bubblingly believable bizarro by Jonathan Visser.

Michael Fuller provides some needed grounding (somebody has to appear semi-sane for balance) as the relatively mild-mannered Doctor friend and is spot-on passive aggressive revengeful when his old buddy won't stop bullying him. But he's got his hands full with a hot-to-trot hornier-than-thou dripping-with-sarcasm bitch of a wife played to perfection by Amy Landis.

Kudos to director Jeffrey Carpenter and artistic director Tami Dixon (and her alter ego "T-Dix") for doing an amazing job with the set and the entire production. They do so much with such a small space, it's ridiculous.

(Jeff and Tami in an earlier production at Bricolage).

The entire behind-the-scenes crew deserves... something. I don't know, cake? Cheetos? Something really, really good. It's so intimate you're in the front row even if you're in the back row. And it really adds to the scintillation factor Whatever that means. (Sounds good, no?).

So seriously you have to see this. It runs April 14 - May 7. Click