This season at Liberty Magic, several of the performers have been given catchy monikers; the latest magician to headline the venue, Robert Ramirez, is billed as “the Musical Theater Magici…
Holiday treats are often overly sweet and holiday entertainments often swerve into stereotypes but The Carols at Carnegie Stage serves up the right potpourri of story, talent, rhymes, sche…
By Eva Phillips There’s an inescapable dread and ennui that comes with the holiday season. If the despotic demands to buy the best gifts, prepare the best meals, and have the best life-cha…
By Eva Phill;ipsWe exist in a remarkable sort of renaissance for musical theater. Indeed, the past 10 to 15 years has been characterized by an abundance of shows that successfully marry the …
By Eva Phillips It is surprising how a horrific accident or cruel twist of fate can catapult a career. Just ask Buddy Holly, or Lynyrd Skynyrd, or Otis Redding. Or ask the strapping young la…
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 M…
Patrick Jordan’s barebones productions hasn’t shied away from visceral drama, but it has its hands full with Dance Nation, Clare Barron’s smart, funny and insightful play about the man…
By Eva Phillips Transcendentalism undergoes many changes as humans evolve. Whether this transcendentalism manifests the thirst to conquer the elements by mastering a flying apparatus, or dev…
By Brian Pope The timeless compositions of Alan Menken have been the heartbeat of many memorable musical tales dealing with the themes of duty, love, and morality. Should Ariel abandon her f…
Stage 62 takes audiences back to the 1960s in their latest production of Hairspray. The musical is based on John Waters’s 1988 film of the same name. With its six-year run on Broadway, …
By Eva Phillips The ways girls behave and the things they do to one another within the overwhelming hives of school, their social structures, and their own minds is the source of great, and …
An intriguing journey for anyone who loves Shakespeare’s works or treasures the intimate artistry of solo theatre, Shakespeare’s Will provides a memorable dramatic portrait of a woman wh…
By Eva Phillips In remarks discussing the nature of violent and racist language, Claudia Rankine cited the post-structural linguistic semiotics of fellow intellectual Judith Butler, stating,…
Identity, human connection (or disconnection), and growth are universal pieces of the human experience. In Attack Theatre’s upcoming show The Kitchen Sink, the audience will be taken on an…
I’ll be honest: as a script, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike confuses me and on occasion annoys the heck out of me. (To give you the Reader’s Digest version of why, I’ll just point…
By Eva Phillips Harper York, not unlike two infamously fabled star cross’d lovers, had a feverish, impassioned vision that she was driven to bring to life. Thankfully, unlike those two lov…
Florencia en el Amazonas was performed Saturday night for the first time by Pittsburgh Opera, and the audience on hand at the Benedum was treated to a production that was brilliant to the ea…
Sleep much? You might sleep for at least one night with your eyes open after The Woman in Black at PICT Classic Theatre. A joyful terror, this legendary dramatized ghost story runs through N…
Non-State Actors latest production tackles cults and their susceptible nature in The Ravages of Now. The devised play puts the audience in the middle of a meeting for, “The Collective,” …
By Eva Phillips Maybe Sweeney Todd isn’t being egregiously hyperbolic when he says there is a place in the world full of shit called London. The plague looms heavy; perfidious law-makers a…
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 …
Shakespeare’s Will. Perhaps the two-word title of Quantum Theatre’s autumn 2019 production sums up what many people think they know about the playwright’s wife. That very document and …
Saturday evening, November 9, will mark an important milestone in the long history of Pittsburgh Opera, when the curtain goes up on Florencia en el Amazonas, the first-ever Spanish-langua…
By Eva Phillips I first encountered Lisa Kron’s remarkable, one-person “show,” 2.5 Minute Ride, as a referential framework characteristically unconventional mechanisms through which qu…
Cup-A-Jo Productions along with Pittsburgh Fringe debuted their third installment of Unhinged this past weekend at Aftershock Theatre. What they’ve coined as, “Pittsburgh’s only Hallow…