YEARS TO THE DAY Comes to Carnegie Stage

Irish Riviera Productions and The Beverly Hills Playhouse will present the Pittsburgh premiere of Years to the Day, written and directed by Allen Barton and starring Dihlon McManne and David Whalen.

The show runs from February 6 to February 23, 2025, at Carnegie Stage, 25 W. Main St., Carnegie, Pa. Performances are scheduled for Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30 pm, and Sundays at 1:00 pm.

First presented in 2013 during the height of the Obama years, Years to the Day was named one of Los Angeles' 10 Best New Plays by LA Weekly and has since been performed in ten cities across three continents. Allen Barton's script is a timeless and still timely treatise on the nature of friendship and how it can survive a world that seems to change more quickly with the passing years, not tied to any actual politician or specific years of stress that those issues can bring to the fore.

Years to the Day centers on two old friends, Dan and Jeff, who meet for coffee - it's been eight years to the day since their last in-person meeting. What unfolds is an 80-minute single conversation between them, where the topics of friendship, family, marriage, health, kids and politics intertwine to make them question the nature of friendship, and whether the bond they made in the first week of college can withstand the increasing stress of different opinions across all those topics. Have the intervening years made them more tolerant of these different views? Or have they become calcified under a form of "maturity" that would say, "There are some opinions that simply cannot be tolerated anymore"?

Allen Barton is the owner of the Beverly Hills Playhouse, and is a playwright/author, director, teacher and classical pianist. His other plays include Circling, Disconnection, and Engagement. Barton's directing credits include Engagement, The Real Thing, Rabbit Hole, The Last Five Years, Burn This, The Heidi Chronicles, Oleanna, Speed-the-Plow, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Brilliant Traces, Duet for One, and Circling. Allen's acting resume includes extensive credits on stage, television and film, and he is also active as a classical pianist - he was a prizewinner in the 2002 Los Angeles Liszt Society Competition, has recorded five compact discs (available on Apple Music and other streaming services) and performs solo recitals regularly on both coasts. In 2010 he was made a Steinway Artist.

Dihlon McManne has been a professional actor for 45 years, appearing most recently as Don Sheppard, Producer of "60 Minutes" in the TV series, "Manhunt." He has worked in Theater, Film and Television, including the world premiere of Lisa Loomer's Living Out at The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and was a working member of The Beverly Hills Playhouse for ten years. Other roles include Macbeth at The Kern Shakespeare Festival; Mike in Stephen Berkoff's East at The Magic Theater in San Francisco and La MaMa in NYC for which he won an LA Drama-Logue and Bay Area Theater Critics Circle awards for Best Actor; Vince, in both the stage and film adaptation of Prospect, written and directed by Octavio Solis. Dihlon has performed with Tim Robbins' Actors Gang in LA, been directed by Gene Reynolds ("MASH"), worked with such artists as Julie Herbert and John O'Keefe, and was a member of San Francisco's infamous Dude Theater. He performed his critically acclaimed solo show Jersey Boy in various theaters in Los Angeles and at The United Solo Festival Off Broadway in NYC.

David Whalen has performed in more than 100 plays at some of America's finest theatres, including The Guthrie Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, South Coast Rep, Roundabout Theatre Company, PICT, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Alley Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theater, City Theatre Company, Pittsburgh Playwrights, Quantum, and barebones productions. He recently made his eighth stage appearance as Sherlock Holmes in Kinetic Theatre's holiday production of A Sherlock Carol, just finished the Pre-Broadway Premiere of RUTKA at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and prior to that, the Internationally-acclaimed HISTORY PLAYS at the Guthrie Theatre, among others. Whalen has been recognized as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Performer of the Year, and has been awarded Kevin Kline, Barrymore, and Helen Hayes awards for his work. His film and television work includes "The Loudest Voice," "FBI: Most Wanted," "American Pastoral," "Southpaw," "The Last Witch Hunter," "The Fault in Our Stars," "Jack Reacher," "61*" and many others. He plays George Washington in the upcoming film "1787: The American Constitution."

The production is designed by Dr. Rae K. du Sollae and Dihlon McManne, and the Production Stage Manager is Meghan Walsh.

The Beverly Hills Playhouse is an acting school with theaters and training facilities in Beverly Hills, California, and also in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. It is one of the oldest acting schools and theatres in the Los Angeles area. Notable alumni include George Clooney, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ted Danson, Tyne Daly, Doris Roberts, and James Cromwell.

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