Mercy of a Storm, a new play by Jeffrey Hatcher, will premiere at the theatre that commissioned it: City Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA. Veteran actor Frank Converse will star in the drama of a recently-married, even more-recently separated couple trying to figure out where they went wrong.

Richard Corley directs the piece, April 11-May 5, as part of City Theatre's New Works On Stage program. Other Hatcher works include Compleat Female Stage Beauty (another City commission), Three Viewings, Sockdology and Scotland Road. Converse, a Broadway veteran (Philadelphia Story, A Streetcar Named Desire) also starred in TV's "Movin' On" and a PlayMakers Rep staging of Skylight in North Carolina in 1977.

In Mercy of a Storm, Converse plays a rich and orderly middle-aged man who probably shouldn't have married the younger, more brash, more middle-class Zanovia. When both visit the Country Club together on New year's Eve 1945, they take some time to sort things out.

For tickets ($21-32) and information on Mercy of a Storm at City Theatre call (412) 431-CITY.

— By David Lefkowitz