May 23: "The Underpants"

[pic courtesy of the Tribune Review]

Produced by: City Theatre Company

When: Previews begin at 7 p.m. today. Opens Wednesday. 9 p.m. May 28, June 4 and 11; 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays; 7 p.m. Tuesdays; 5:30 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. all Sundays

Cost: $15 to $40

Where: City Theatre, 1300 Bingham St. at South 13th Street, South Side

Details: 412-431-2489 or www.CityTheatreCompany.org

Summary coutesy of Trib Review's Alice T. Carter:

The cynic would assume it was only a matter of time until someone wrote a play about the uproar that results when a woman has a wardrobe malfunction during a very public ceremony.

But playwright Carl Sternheim anticipated the flap over Janet Jackson's public revelation by nearly a century.

In 1910, Sternheim wrote a classic German comedy, "The Underpants," about a puritanical bureaucrat whose wife becomes an object of attention when she accidentally loses control of her underpants during a parade. read on...