Wednesday, November 23, 2016
With more wit and thought than puns and pratfalls, this is what’s meant by “high comedy.” But for all its delicious dialogue, Ivan Turgenev’s play is never arch. Not Noel Coward, it�…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 10:26AMSaturday, November 19, 2016
NEW YORK – For its 46th annual induction, the Theater Hall of Fame gathered theater professionals, families and friends to celebrate eight additions to the 536 already adorning the upper l…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 04:52PMWednesday, November 9, 2016
He’s a Texan, Pittsburgher and New Yorker, but mainly, actor-playwright Eugene Lee is a native of the stage.
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMTuesday, November 8, 2016
Why now? Why Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” in 2016? Because money still trumps love. Because racism and anti-Semitism flourish. And because the quality of mercy is indeed stra…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMThursday, October 6, 2016
We love our children, but do they love us? (Did we love our parents?) Peter Ustinov put it this way: “Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.” Children necessarily w…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMWednesday, October 5, 2016
Yes, “Hand to God” is just as funny as you’ve heard, and if you haven’t heard, you must live too far away from the South Side to hear the gales of laughter. But “gales” isn’t s…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMWednesday, August 10, 2016
Something old and something new: Quantum Theatre’s shows are rarely conventional or predictable, but Lope de Vega’s “Peribanez” plays with conventions in surprising ways, while its e…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMFriday, July 8, 2016
Summertime, and the theater is easy . . . except that it isn’t always, not when it’s Samuel Beckett.
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 11:25AMThursday, July 7, 2016
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
For the 12th annual version of its signature Theatre Festival in Black & White, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre mixes and matches its one-act plays with a difference. Rather than grouping…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 01:37PMSunday, June 5, 2016
The New Horizon Theatre has done us a favor by reviving “The Old Settler,” partly because it’s a reminder of the playwright, John Henry Redwood (1943-2003), who had substantial ti…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 08:57AMSaturday, May 28, 2016
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
It’s as if Mike Bartlett’s play isn’t wearing any clothes, and I exited thinking, in the hyperbole of fresh enthusiasm, why aren’t all plays like this?! Who needs furniture, pr…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 04:47PMSunday, April 24, 2016
For years, the house at 1727 Bedford Ave. in the Hill District has sat as a rebuke to Pittsburgh — derelict, crumbling, the windows rotting. Visiting theater artists and other pilgrim…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMTuesday, April 19, 2016
The one thing everyone seems to know about “The Flick” is that it’s long — and it turns out to be longer than you’ve heard, because it’s three hours plus the intermission.
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 06:06PMTuesday, March 22, 2016
An African American, a Jew and a WASP walk into a bar . . . That’s how the joke might begin, except in this case it isn’t a bar, there’s also a Muslim-American, and “Disgraced” isn…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMTuesday, March 15, 2016
The eighth annual August Wilson Monologue Competition had a special guest last night at the August Wilson Center: Denzel Washington, in town preparing to direct and star in a movie of Mr. Wi…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMWednesday, February 24, 2016
Shakespeare’s comedies are supposed to be fun, and pruned and reinvented with more than a touch of improv, this Filter Theatre version of “Twelfth Night,” direct from London to the Byh…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 03:31PMWednesday, February 3, 2016
On the stage, just five actors, because that’s what the economics of new plays demands. But projected on a soaring rear wall suggesting filing cabinets or concentration camp concrete, a vi…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMSunday, January 17, 2016
Theater is one place where evil really pays off, and no one had a more loathsome, villainous pair of leading roles to play on Pittsburgh stages in 2015 than James FitzGerald. His rise to the…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMSunday, December 20, 2015
NEW YORK — That medium-large island off the coast of Europe continues to exercise considerable fascination on our stage. Here are two bold British imports causing a stir on Broadway, …
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMWednesday, December 16, 2015
To start with, “Yinz’r” is a contraction of “yinz are,” and “scrooged” is, of course, a verb made out of the famous name. If you’re within the sound of this review, you know …
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMWednesday, December 9, 2015
Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes – whatever their genres, the great authors were always great storytellers. Victorian novelist Charles Dickens (1812-70) belongs in that elite company, and alt…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMFriday, November 20, 2015
Don’t let the blistering street language with which Dominique Morisseau opens “Sunset Baby” mislead you: It’s with a poet’s skill and an aching heart that she observes this trio of…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 05:59PMAlong with his poetry and passion, August Wilson had the gift of finding the intimate in the epic, and vice versa. In his Pittsburgh Cycle of 10 plays, he tells stories of families and indiv…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMTuesday, November 17, 2015
NEW YORK – First up in the 45th induction ceremony into the Theater Hall of Fame in the upper lobby of Broadway’s Gershwin Theatre, where the names of Hall members are emblazoned in…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 04:48PMThursday, October 22, 2015
Midway or so through Andrea Lepcio’s new play, one of the two bewildered women trapped in a mysterious underground of memory and clutter says, “I feel like I didn’t get the m…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMThursday, October 1, 2015
Homophobia at a prestigious all-black prep school is at the heart of it. In contrast, there are spirituals, lovingly sung a cappella as respite from the taut, competitive life of a dema…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMSunday, September 27, 2015
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario — This colorful confection of a town is worth visiting in any season, but especially during the long run of the Shaw Festival, this year extending to Nov.…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMWednesday, September 23, 2015
There’s no apparent pattern to the second and final pair of New Works Festival programs, running through the weekend. Variety is its spice.
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 12:00AMMonday, September 21, 2015
Stephen Flaherty, 55, a Dormont native best known as the composer of the Broadway musicals “Ragtime,” “Once on This Island” and “Seussical,” will be inducted into the Theater Hal…
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 03:33PM 
