Front Porch Theatricals’ heavenly production of Violet has a lot of baggage. Johnmichael Bohach’s rustic, minimalist scenic design is primarily comprised of suitcases, chests, and duffel…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 02:00PM[SHARE]Prime Stage Theater’s adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a sincere, though sickly-sweet interpretation of the Young Adult Literature phenomenon. To enter the New Hazlett Thea…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 09:23AM[SHARE]The cast of Hercules Didn’t Wade in the Water with Director Wali Jamal I loved Hercules Didn’t Wade in the Water by Michael A. Jones and directed by Wali Jamal. The opening performance…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 01:48PM[SHARE]The cut-away of an Irish cottage that serves as a set for PICT’s production of John B. Keane’s Sive (pronounced sigh-ve), looks a quaint place, if sparse and threadbare, but it will hous…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 06:00PM[SHARE]This week saw the announcement of the nominations for the 71st annual Tony Awards. As is the case with every year, some shows were lavished with nominations across the board—Natasha, Pierr…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 02:00PM[SHARE]It is hard to acknowledge something as profoundly masculine and steeped in caricatures as Arthur Miller’s milestone piece, Death of Salesman could evoke an emotionally unhinged response in…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 04:00PM[SHARE]The board of directors at the Theatre Factory in Trafford has a reputation of not shying away from challenging productions, and this group has the pluckiness, daring, and foresight to bring …
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 05:00PM[SHARE]“We ask you now to imagine a grown cat in flight.” This line—as a glowing scarf floated through the air while cast members created the sounds of a cat gurgling and cooing—was just …
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 01:12PM[SHARE]A great word for adaptation is “knock-off”. Like ‘cheap’; ‘pegged-down’; an insinuation that’s just a bit crappier. The ill craftsmanship of a poorly made, get-rich-quick i…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 12:44PM[SHARE]The incessant, nagging chirp of crickets. It’s the iPhone noise that never reached the popularity of the classic marimba ringtone. It underscores many a painful, unending awkward silence i…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 07:56PM[SHARE]What’s Missing is a show premised on imperfection, incompletion, dissatisfaction. The disembodied, mellifluous voice we hear as the two somber dancers begin their very calculated, yet very…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 06:59PM[SHARE]“He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.” – Linda Loman, Death of a Salesman Whe…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 12:48PM[SHARE]The playbill for Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama’s aggressive and successful challenge of Andre Dumas’ timeless classic The Three Musketeers employs much space dedicated …
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 03:28PM[SHARE]The final day of Fringe started, admittedly, with a bit of delirium. Fatigued, processing all the mini-dramaturgical moments from the past two days, I was a bit beleaguered re-entering the A…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 12:13PM[SHARE]It is apropos, perhaps, that when entering the Artist’s Image Resource, I was tantalized by phenomenally raw pieces crafted by artists of varying levels of experience that lined the wall. …
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 03:52PM[SHARE]Setting controls a play. It’s its backbone. This is particularly true when the setting contains an entire plot within a singular space. Also, particularly true when the audience feels …
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 12:35PM[SHARE]College campuses in America are a hotbed of cultural discourse. As they should be. However, unlike the last hundred years of existing as a space for entire generations to generate a stance o…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 08:42PM[SHARE]How does one continue the timeless story of a boy who never grows up? Steven Spielberg’s Hook notwithstanding, the obvious answer to that question is to explore his past. And that’s just…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 12:42PM[SHARE]Amid the dismally, dreary haze of Friday evening, there was a certain excited hum and rattle that illuminated the day as it settled into dusk. This excitement was the anxious anticipation an…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 05:12PM[SHARE]These days, Jed Allen Harris says it takes a certain kind of script to draw him from the flexible confines of academic theater. He helped lay the foundation of today’s dynamic Pittsburgh…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 01:51PM[SHARE]The evening began with the ridiculous but thoroughly entertaining one man show Laundry Night by Captain Ambivalent. Captain Ambivalent sings with the accompaniment of a gold accordion, t…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 04:20PM[SHARE]Jill Jeffrey was a like many young actors, making the rounds at auditions and giving little thought to children’s theater–until she stepped on stage in Journey Back to Oz at Gemini Theat…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 01:42PM[SHARE]The building my uncle is renovating is a wide open space barren of furniture, the chipped paint dotted with hungry-looking light sockets. I am with him while he works, because my parents nee…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 01:20PM[SHARE]The Duquesne Red Masquers could not have asked for better timing for their production of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. A show about a populist President who rides to power by claiming to rep…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 12:34PM[SHARE]Ever have that dream where you’re suddenly in the middle of a play, but it’s in someone’s living room instead of on a stage and the actors are inches away from you? And then you realiz…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 12:00PM[SHARE]If you go to Dreamgirls expecting a biopic musical about The Supremes, you’ll be surprised: The show actually is a fictionalized tale inspired not just by the legendary female trio from th…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 12:00PM[SHARE]Question: “How do you sink a Polish battleship? Answer: Put it in the water.” Please, don’t get offended, the David Ives’ play Polish Joke is loaded with “Polish jokes” that ar…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 12:00PM[SHARE]Escapism has no tool more effective than nostalgia. Forever Plaid, an off Broadway musical originally created by Stuart Ross, is a series of harmonized covers and polite sketches from a musi…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 05:34PM[SHARE]Prime Stage Theatre’s adaptation of George Orwell’s 1949 classic, 1984, is ambitiously loyal to its original text. It attempts to extrapolate the inner story of one man inside of a par…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 12:00PM[SHARE]This is not a review of the world premiere of Arlene Weiner’s play Findings produced by the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company. This is a “re-view”. What’s the difference? In Fin…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 11:22AM[SHARE]This musical has so much; it is so rich. It is a cascade of characters who are fully drawn, with captivating arcs. It’s a litany of singing performances, CMU’s great bastion of tal…
SOURCE: onstagepittsburgh.com at 07:00PM[SHARE]
