Author Archives
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Discover What Lies “Downstairs….” At City Theatre
City Theatre’s latest production begins with the flushing of a “Pittsburgh toilet.” This inside joke puts us in an unfinished basement to find a disheveled bare-chested Martin Giles stumbling barefoot into another day. He’s Teddy, the down-and-out and probably crazy… Read More ›
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City Theatre Hits Hard with “One Night in Miami…”
City Theatre is mounting one of its best productions in some time, but it runs only through Dec. 1, so put your Thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge and get to the South Side. One Night in Miami . . imagines… Read More ›
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Prime Stage Revives Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”
I’m not sure if high schoolers read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter these days, or if they do, these woke teens would find extramarital sex as sinful as the Puritans. It’s telling that even Liam Macik, who adapted and directed Prime… Read More ›
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Pittsburgh Playwright Theatre’s “Gem of the Ocean” Triumphs
A shaky sound system. Neighborhood kids shouting. Three quick explosions of firecrackers. Honking of car horns. Emergency sirens. A noisy low-flying helicopter. It was opening night and the show must go on – and so it did with power and… Read More ›
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Carnegie Mellon Drama Presents “The Comedy of Errors”
This early (circa 1594) Shakespeare play is often presented as a broad farce with lots of slapstick, mugging, leering and physical hijinks. The Carnegie Mellon School of Drama show directed by the well-traveled Don Wadsworth lives up to that convention,… Read More ›
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PICT Takes on Henry James in “The Heiress”
“The only good thing in the story is the girl,” felt Henry James about his 1880 novel, Washington Square. He disliked the book, calling it “an unhappy accident.” “The girl” is Catherine Sloper–a young woman, actually–the only child of the… Read More ›
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“The Gun Show (Can We Talk About This?)” Sparks Dialogue on Gun Control
Anton Chekhov’s advice to playwrights – “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there” – finds its real-life counterpart in playwright… Read More ›
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Coram Boy
For the opening production at the Pittsburgh Playhouse’s Highmark Theatre, director Tomé Cousins has chosen to stage Coram Boy, a British product adapted from a young-adult novel about scandals surrounding the Coram Hospital, founded in the 18th century as a charity… Read More ›