By Sharon Eberson

The 2023 season just announced by Front Porch Theatricals is further evidence that the company that bills itself as “Pittsburgh’s boutique musical theater company” has a keen eye for works that capture the current zeitgeist while paying homage to giants from the past.

Of the two shows announced during the company’s annual cabaret Monday night, one is currently making a splash in New York, and one is not far removed from a Broadway success story.

The two-show season opens at the New Hazlett Theater in May with William Finn’s Falsettos, which was revived to acclaim on Broadway in 2016, and continues in August with Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, a show that famously flopped in its Broadway debut but has gained soaring momentum in subsequent productions, winning London’s Olivier Award as best new musical in 2000. The show is now enjoying an extended run at off-Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez. And to keep things rolling along, director Richard Linklater is in the mist of filming an adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along for more than a decade, allowing the actors to age with their characters. 

Producers Bruce E. G. Smith and Nancy Zionts, in announcing the shows on Monday, said both had long been on a wish list of “meaningful musicals” developed with the Front Porch co-founder and much-missed Leon Zionts, who died in 2019. 

Front Porch, which presented Finn’s A New Brain in 2018, next moves on to his Falsettos (May 18-28, 2023), a musical about the rending and mending of a family, while experiencing a microcosm of the AIDS epidemic. Merrily We Roll Along (August 18-27, 2023) boasts a book by George Furth, adapted from the George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart play of the same name, about lifelong friendships among a composer, writer and playwright-lyricist. The Sondheim score features songs including Now You Know, Good Thing Going and Not a Day Goes By.

In 2022, Front Porch presented a grand Grand Hotel and a moving Man of No Importance, the latter preceding the current off-Broadway revival starring Jim Parsons. Both shows had their runs cut short by COVID, and video clips from the musicals were presented as part of the seventh annual cabaret.

The starry event on Monday marked a return to the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, site of the company’s first show. Only Me, by Doris Esteban, Marjorie Stewart and David Michael Ed, premiered at the East Liberty venue in 2009. Three stars of that show — Christine Laitta, Christina McCann and Jim Scriven (the others were Leon Zionts and Ted Watts Jr.) — were in an audience filled with local theater artists and longtime friends of the company.

Part of Front Porch’s mission is to employ local actors and provide internships in various theatrical jobs. It was pointed out that some absentees from past shows were busy on Broadway or on Broadway tours.

Hosting the festivities was Daina Michelle Griffith (Next to Normal, Grey Gardens Grand Hotel), who will direct Merrily We Roll Along next year. Rob James, among the cabaret performers on Monday, will direct Falsettos.

Griffith introduced a crackling good lineup of local singers, accompanied by Douglas Levine on piano and directed by Deana Muro. 

The night’s entertainment was provided by Lindsay Bayer, Elizabeth Boyke, Delana Flowers, Ryan Hadbavny, Ashley Harmon, Carolyn Jerz, Erin Lindsey Krom, Erich Laseck, Danny Mayhak, Marnie Quick, Christy Rodibaugh, Matthew Rush, Allan Snyder, Becki Toth and Drew Leigh Williams.

For tickets and more information on the 2023 Front Porch season, visit frontporchpgh.com.

Categories: Feature Stories

Tags: Falsettos, Front Porch Theatricals, Kelly Strayhorn Theatre, Merrily We Roll Along, Stephen Sondheim, William Finn