Green Flag Drops to Start Vintage Grand Prix Race Weekend; ‘Eff.Ul.Gents’ and ‘The Gin Game’ on Local Stages (Sat., 7/16/16)

1) Drivers start your engines! Fans lower your tailgates! It’s the start of the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix race weekend in Schenley Park. One of America’s largest vintage race events. Today’s featured events include practice runs (8:30 a.m. – 11:50); race qualifying heats with over 150 vintage racers (1 – 5 p.m.); car shows featuring international and British cars (11 a.m. – 4 p.m.). The Jaguar is the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix’s Marque of the Year 2016. For a $40 charitable donation you can even take a lap around the course as a passenger in a vintage racer through the Vintage Ride Experience (noon – 12:50 p.m.). Race heats are tomorrow from noon to 5 p.m.. Charities benefiting from race proceeds are the Autism Society of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny Valley School. Free.

The Jaguar pace car leads the pack to start the race with the 139 and 26 racers in the first row.

2) Usually it’s just lazy journalism to preview an artistic performance by repeating the promotional copy that the company puts out. But every once in a while, you look at the material and you think, “I’m not going to try to paraphrase that.” Here is what fireWALL dance theatre has to say about its new piece, Eff.Ul.Gents: “Beauty. Sex. Power. Three scenes. Dynamic. Provocative. Effulgent. The struggle of feeling comfortable in your skin, wanting to explore your sexual desires and finally being who you are and owning every bit of it. No matter what these women have gone through, how difficult it may have been, their paths have crossed and they will overcome it in a sophisticated and powerful manner.” Eff.Ul.Gents is choreographed by Elisa-Marie Alaio, with music by Reni Monteverde. 8 p.m. Ends today. At Carnegie Stage, 25 W. Main St., Carnegie. (MV)

3) The Gin Game is one of those potential hidden gems on the entertainment calendar—a Pulitzer Prize-winning play from decades ago, rarely produced and barely even remembered nowadays, until it pops up at a theater somewhere. Lately this comic drama about a pair of cantankerous old folks in a nursing home is enjoying a comeback. Last year The Gin Game was revived on Broadway with the esteemed geezer-legends James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson playing the roles, and now it’s being done locally by Apple Hill Playhouse. The play’s action begins when the old guy and gal, feeling lonely and abandoned, decide to strike up a friendship over games of gin rummy. At first all goes well, as the duo engage in jovial banter while sharing reminiscences of the lives they’ve lived. But the card games turn competitive, and so does the conversation, and what unfolds is a battle over who’s got the better hand in every respect. The Gin Game, by D.L. Coburn, received the 1978 Pulitzer for Drama. 7:30 p.m. Ends Today. At 275 Manor Rd., Delmont. (MV)

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