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 ›
Archived Reviews
Archived from Pittsburgh in the Round
“Etty”
Life can be a constant succession of internal and external turmoil that can be emotionally and spiritually crushing; yet one can always find joy, beauty and triumphs to celebrate if only we look inside ourselves. This is the take-away after… Read More ›
“You Can Call Me Al”
By Eva Phillips What we have stored as memory is vital. Everything present, everything “now” is chaos. This is statement that is at once a quixotically simple, irrefutable truth, and undeniably self-negating. By one token, of course all that we… Read More ›
A Family Affair in Ray Werner’s “Run the Rabbit Path”
PICT Classic Theater’s second play of their 2018-2019 season is an original by Pittsburgh playwright, Ray Werner. Werner’s Run the Rabbit Path looks at a family facing the death of a loved one, and explores the nostalgia and resentment they… Read More ›
Fantastical Imaginings Fuel “Tempest” at Pittsburgh Public Theater
The Tempest at Pittsburgh Public Theatre is a brave new production for our times. “Past is prologue.” So Shakespeare’s 1611 text benefits from all that has come before, reflecting the playwright’s craft as well as his familial concerns near the… Read More ›
Brian Quijada and City Theatre Explore Race and Education in “Where Did We Sit on the Bus?”
Walking through a bookstore, there are sections we all dodge. For me, it’s romance novels. Covers of strapping hunks with bedroom eyes scream redundancy. So it is with the theatre; different genres engender varying enthusiasm levels. One-man shows are slightly… Read More ›
In The Heights
By Brian Pope Pittsburgh Winter 2019 has (so far) been very unkind to residents. It’s par for the course but distressing nonetheless. Unexpectedly though, the season and the city have been very kind to one Lin-Manuel Miranda in the last… Read More ›
Pittsburgh Opera’s “afterWARds” Opens at the CAPA
Mozart was in the air last night at the CAPA Theater, when Pittsburgh Opera presented the first of four performances of afterWARds, the composer’s monumental Idomeneo, “re-imagined” by David Paul. The overly-large and cumbersome work is an opera of the… Read More ›
Twelfth Night
By Helen Meade Pittsburgh Classic Players opened their first full season of plays with an appropriately-timed production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night…on Twelfth Night (Friday, January 5, 2019) in the Spartan Community Center, in the space formerly occupied by St…. Read More ›
At the Public: Hershey Felder is IRVING BERLIN
In a previous post, I discussed the difficulties that theater companies encounter in selecting a holiday show, particularly one that hasn’t been over-produced in the Pittsburgh area. Pittsburgh Public Theater has come up with a brilliant solution; a tribute to… Read More ›