Stephen Sondheim is often regarded as the William Shakespeare of musical theatre by the people who have spent the last 60 years admiring, dissecting, and interpreting his work. The proof for that claim lies in the continuous stream of greatest-of-all-time… Read More ›
FallwithPITR
Pittsburgh Opera’s 80th Season Begins With a Truly Grand “Madama Butterfly”
Pittsburgh Opera launched its 80th season last night in truly grand style, with probably the best staged and sung performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly seen and heard in decades of “Butterflies,” and a large and exceptionally enthusiastic audience unleashed a… Read More ›
Pride and Prejudice
Do you recall your high school literature courses, and Jane Austen’s iconic 19th-century masterpiece Pride and Prejudice? An unconventional and contemporary adaptation by Playwright Kate Hamill premieres in Pittsburgh sparking the Pittsburgh Public Theater’s 2018-19 season. Hamill’s script is a… Read More ›
Good Manners in the House: Theatre Etiquette Part 2
When you get ready for your theatre experience, you are preparing for a journey. You may be walking through a site-specific performance like Quantum Theatre’s Chatterton, or you may expect to be seated through a show in a venue that… Read More ›
Lobby Hero
Breakneck dialogue and shattering hearts take center stage in barebones productions latest show, Kenneth Lonegran’s Lobby Hero, a play which examines the banalities of four individuals’ working lives explode into emotionally enormities as they collide with one another. Set during… Read More ›
Musical of the Month: Cabaret
History has taught us what a revolution sounds like. The slice of a falling guillotine. The pulse of rapid gunfire. The echo of a rallying cry. But when it comes to culture, you can only recognize the sounds of a… Read More ›
Laurel Semerdjian Returning to Pittsburgh Opera in “Madama Butterfly”
Pittsburgh Opera will launch its 2018-‘19 season (the company’s 80th) on Saturday evening, October 6, with the first of four performances of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. This perennial favorite, directed by Linda Brovsky, will mark the return of Antony Walker to… Read More ›
The Speed of Sound opens Texture Contemporary Ballet’s 8th Season
Texture Contemporary Ballet opened its eighth season with The Speed of Sound at the New Hazlett Theatre on Friday evening. The program consisted of two premieres; Glass Walls with music composed by Phillip Glass and Forth Road Bridge with songs by Scottish band… Read More ›
Now & Then
South Park Theatre is a bit of a drive from Pittsburgh proper, but I recently caught their production of Now & Then by Sean Grennan. This show, directed by Allison M. Weakland, was an interesting combination of some of the… Read More ›
Macbeth
Little Lake Theatre opened their modern version of Shakespeare’s classic Macbeth Thursday evening. The production, directed by Little Lake’s Artistic Director Jena Oberg, uses the campus and theater to bring Shakespeare’s masterpiece of ambition, deceit, and madness to life. Shakespeare wrote… Read More ›