City Theatre Company

Through March 22
Various times

We now interrupt cyberspace for an important PSA: You still have two weeks left to see Molly Smith Metzler’s Elemeno Pea at City Theatre. Not only is the play making its Pittsburgh debut, City Theatre worked with Metzler—who visited at the start of rehearsals and made revisions to the script—to produce a new version.

Dubbed a “witty have and have-nots” comedy,” Elemeno Pea (whose title refers to a private connection between the play’s sisters) runs through March 22nd as part of the Southside company’s 40th anniversary season. Directed by City Theatre’s own Tracy Brigden, the play stars Ariel Woodiwiss, Anthony Comis and Tony Chiroldes—all making their City Theatre debut. Joining the trio to round out the cast are Pittsburgh actors Kimberly Parker Green and Robin Abramson.

Blue-collar Buffalo meets beachfront excess in a play that explores that Brigden calls the “ninety-nine versus one percent conversation that is happening all around us.”

Audiences will be transported to summer’s end, when social worker Devon visits her sister Simone at a wealthy Martha’s Vineyard estate where she works as the personal assistant (complete with a six-figure salary, preppy boyfriend with a yacht and generous clothing allowance) to the wife of a billionaire. Trouble ensues when trophy wife Michaela unexpectedly returns from a trip and crashes the sisters’ weekend.

Find out what ensues when the lives of wise cracking Devon, aspiring author Simone and universally despised Michaela intersect. Toss in a luxurious guest house, an eccentric boyfriend, and a put-upon servant and you’ve got a drama that balances sharp wit with deep insight.

The production’s creative team includes Tony Ferrieri (scenic design), Robert C.T. Steele (costume design), Andrew David Ostrowski (lighting design) and Ryan McMasters (sound design). Currently under commission at South Coast Rep, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville and Manhattan Theatre Club, Molly Smith Metzler is also the author of Close Up Space, Training Wisteria and The May Queen.

Learn more about the play and cast at Greenroom Young Professionals Night on March 13 and Sunday Talkbacks on March 15.

Purchase tickets.

Jennifer has worked at the Mattress Factory, Brooklyn Museum of Art and Dahesh Museum of Art and is co-author of Pittsburgh Signs Project: 250 Signs of Western Pennsylvania. She also is co-coordinator of Handmade Arcade. Musically, she is in a band called The Garment District and is a founding member of Brooklyn's The Ladybug Transistor.