“Animal Farm” Opens at Prime Stage; Say Grazie for Delicious Italian Fare (CPs Sat., 3/7/15)

Now let me tell you about the pigs! Orwell’s book, reborn as a stage play, keeps on telling.

1) Prime Stage is known mainly as a theater company for teen audiences, but the plays are equally enjoyable for adults. Many are adapted from edgy social-issue novels you might’ve read in high school, like Fahrenheit 451 (done recently by Prime Stage). Now comes Animal Farm, by Andrew Periale based on George Orwell’s fable about animals booting out the farmer who has exploited them, only to find the pigs taking over.

Prime Stage has used a British theatrical adaptation, relocating the farm to West Virginia and adding Appalachian music. This doesn’t change the essence of the story, though. Orwell wrote his book in the 1940s as a satire of how Stalin’s dictatorship had ruined the ideals of the Russian Revolution. It’s a story that will live on as long as there are pigs co-opting populist ideals, and if you haven’t seen the tricks depicted live on stage, this is your chance. 8 p.m. Through March 15. At the New Hazlett Theater, 6 Allegheny Square East, North Side.

2) There’s a great Italian restaurant in Wexford, tucked into the same building that houses the prestigious Oxford Athletic Club and several other businesses. Grazie Restaurant and Event Center, a comfortable family style restaurant with high-quality food, full bar, and an outdoor patio overlooking the Oxford Athletic Club’s pool, is open to the general public. The menu offers rich, traditional Italian fare as well as healthier options. Menu categories are appetizers, salads, specialty pizzas, hoagies, gourmet burgers, sandwiches, pastas, and seafood. Highlights include Fried Zucchini, Buffalo Chicken and Margherita Flatbread Pizzas, Grazie Portabella, Blackened Salmon Salad, Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo, Pasta a la Grazie, New York Strip Steak, and Crab Cakes. We’ve all heard of soup and salad, or half sandwich and salad, Grazie has an even better combo—a meatball and salad! The servers are friendly and attentive. Grazie is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week. 100 Village Club Dr.

3) For a chilling drama on a chilly night it is still hard to beat Henrik Ibsen, the 19^th-century master of plays about personal disaster. His plays scandalized audiences of the time and none was more scandalous than Ghosts. Adapted by Virginia Wall Gruenert, the opening has elements of a high-society farce, with some silly exchanges that involve a wealthy widow donating money to start an orphanage in memory of her late husband. Then the skeletons start rattling from the closet, as it turns out the eminent man was a philandering scoundrel whose legacy includes wrecked lives and syphilis passed on to the next generation. Off the WALL is staging its own adapted version of Ghosts, which stays true to Ibsen’s original but has new touches. 8 p.m. Continues through Mar. 14. Allow extra driving time as the Carnegie exit ramps of the Parkway are closed for construction. 25 W. Main St., Carnegie.

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