Bricolage Productions Staging ‘Die Hard N’at’ At barebones (Sun., 12/8/24)

DIE HARD N’AT by Gayle Pazerski, adapted from the movie. Bricolage Production Company. December 6 – 22. 

If your holiday spirit needs an injection of laughter, there’s a play on the schedule that is bursting with ho-ho-ho-ness, and it’s not about Santa. Die Hard N’at is a Pittsburgh-ized parody of the 1988 action film. The original Die Hard qualified as a “Christmas movie” only because it was set at Yuletide: A vicious gang of armed thieves, led by an evil German mastermind (played by Alan Rickman), take hostages at an office Christmas party. An off-duty cop (Bruce Willis) saves the day amid gunfire, explosions, and hair-raising escapades—proving, apparently, that an all-American, lone-wolf hero can protect us from foreign intruders. There’s a lot to lampoon here, and the folks at Bricolage Production Company know how. Die Hard N’at moves the action from a skyscraper in L.A. to Pittsburgh’s fictional Terrible Tower. The movie’s extreme violence is eliminated. Instead you get a cavalcade of crazy schemes and counter-schemes, as the sophisticated evil mastermind bumps up against the bumbling but bumptious bumptitude of Yinzer Nation. 

The cast includes Patrick Jordan as the heroic cop and Wali Jamal (speaking in a marvelously fluty German-ish accent) as the archvillain. Gayle Pazerski wrote the script; see our review of Bricolage’s 2018 production for details. And see Die Hard N’at in the barebones black box theater. 1211 Braddock Ave., Braddock. (M.V.) 

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