The Outlaws in Concert at South Park; Throughline Theatre Staging ‘Cloud 9’ (Fri., 8/11/17)

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

1) Southern rock finds its way north to South Park as part of the Allegheny County Summer Concert Series with the Outlaws. For over 40 years, the band has been thriving in the Southern rock genre along with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels, and The Allman Brothers (now permanently disbanded with the death of Gregg Allman). Founded in Tampa, Fla., in ’67, the Outlaws put forth a Southern rock opus with “Green Grass and High Tides” and scored a major hit with “There Goes Another Love Song.” Outlaw trademarks include beautiful vocal harmonies and intricate lead guitar play. Surviving the test of time, the inevitable evolution of popular music, and bandmates’ deaths, the Outlaws are definitely alive, kicking, and, it would seem, stronger than ever. Some things really do get better with age. The Steppin Stones open. 7:30 p.m. 3700 Farmshow Dr., South Park Township. (RH)

2) Caryl Churchill has been called “the David Bowie of contemporary theatre” for her constant experimenting with the art form. She’s been at it for so long that she is now more commonly called “the grande dame of British playwrights,” or some such. Throughline Theatre is presenting Churchill’s first major hit, Cloud 9, a play that never met a convention it didn’t play with. Cloud 9 is set in two places and eras—Act 1 at a British estate in colonial Africa in the late 1800s; Act 2 in London in 1979 (the year the play premiered)—and it is a seriocomic saga of how sexual and social attitudes changed, or maybe didn’t. Characters from the first act re-appear in the second—older, but not 100 years older—and the casting is rotated, so every actor has a different role than before. There are men playing women and vice versa, while black/white and gay/straight identities also get shuffled and hanky-panky reigns. The title Cloud 9 may allude to the nine circles of Hell or the nine lives of a cat; we’re not sure. Performances continue through August 19. In the Henry Heymann Theatre at the Stephen Foster Memorial, 4301 Forbes Ave., Oakland. (MV)  

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