City Theatre Serves Up ‘The Last Match’; Buccos vs. Brewers Baseball (Sun., 4/17/16)

1) If the schedule at City Theatre always seems full of plays you haven’t seen before, including some you never heard of, this is intentional. The company is devoted to staging new and recent plays—every production is a Pittsburgh premiere and some are world premieres. City’s latest is The Last Match, by up-and-coming American playwright Anna Ziegler. This one comes fresh to the local stage, having debuted in February in San Diego, and it offers a seriocomic take on an ever-popular American subject: winning.

The story revolves around a fictional tennis match at the U.S. Open. Two high-strung men battle on the court while one player’s wife and the other’s girlfriend provide a running commentary, along with plenty of distracting interaction during breaks in the action. In the premiere at San Diego’s Old Globe theater, The Last Match was performed with the actors swinging imaginary tennis racquets at imaginary balls. City Theatre is doing the play in its Hamburg black-box theater and the word is that no audience members will be harmed. City is also offering a limited number of Pay-What-You-Want tickets. Matches, I mean performances, run through May 15. 2 p.m. with a post-show talk back today. 1300 Bingham St., South Side. (MV)

2) Our beloved Buccos take the diamond again today against the Milwaukee Brewers. It’s also Kids Day, with a Family Fun Zone outside the ball yard beforehand, and all fans 14 and under receiving a Josh Harrison Gnome collectible and a chance to run the bases after the game. First pitch is at 1:35 p.m. Next up for the Pirates is a multi-series road trip to the west. PNC Park, 115 Federal St., North Shore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDBBmxGe82s

3) Colonia – About as far away as you can get from Harry Potter, Emma Watson loses the red fright wig she wore as Hermione and stars in this German film based on the military Chilean coup of 1973. She plays Lena, the wife of Daniel (played by Daniel Brühl). They’re an innocent couple who get caught up in the street protests against General Pinochet. Daniel is abducted by the police (also known as “disappeared”) and gets taken to the remote village of Colonia Dignidad. At the time the place was thought of as a sort of cult run by a man known as Paul Schäfer (here played by Michael Nygvist.) It has since been revealed that Colonia Dignidad was a prison where anti-Pinochet forces were taken to be tortured. Watson pretends to join the cult so that she can rescue Daniel. All in all, a much more tense proposition than who wins the Quidditch final, right? For screens and times check Fandango. (TH)

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