Mike Vargo
It’s the movie that launched a thousand opinions. Out of the Furnace has proved such a range of reactions, both nationally and locally, that the buzz wars have come close to upstaging the movie itself. Is it a Best Picture candidate that offers a rare kind of cinematic storytelling or just a conventional story kept…
In this play, before the action begins or a word is spen, fog rolls in silently. Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre has turned on the fog machine, which serves as a way-back machine. As mists envelop the still-dark stage, it is a sign that we are going back in time. The Crucifer of Blood opens…
If you have never seen True West, I will try to tell you what you’ve been missing. It won’t be easy. This play by Sam Shepard, now at Pittsburgh Public Theater, is sneaky simple. The basic story is so simple that anybody who watches sitcoms can get a hoot out of it. We begin with…
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, now at City Theatre, is the 2013 Tony Award winner for Best Play. Yet I’ve talked to people who are hesitant to see it, due to what one friend called “the Chekhov factor.” Allow me to ease their concerns. The play, written by Christopher Durang, is an over-the-top comedy. And…
Now that autumn is in the air, the season begins in earnest, and a cry goes up all across town: Are you ready for some THEATER? Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre has responded with Martin McDonagh’s A Skull in Connemara, a real head-banger of a dark comedy that comes close, at times, to resembling a…
ONE: CHEAP THRILLS IF YOU BUY NOW. Maybe you’ve always wanted to see this Tony-winning musical anyway, or would like to see it again. Then by all means catch Stage 62’s rendition, playing through July 28. It’s a solid production—and in several respects a brilliant one—for under $20 per ticket. But maybe you are…
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present…” The scene is from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. In Mnemonic, the play currently being presented by Quantum Theatre, Alice goes down a rather different kind of rabbit hole. The Alice in Mnemonic (played by Carolina…
You realize, of course, that you cannot do summer theater properly unless you catch a remake. Of Shakespeare, that is. Altered Shakespeare is red-hot everywhere this year. In Chicago, for instance, they’ve got Othello: the Re, the latest “add-rap-tation” by The Q Brothers; and New York has a new musical based on Love’s Labour’s Lost…
Abigail/1702 takes a strange story and makes it stranger. On opening night at City Theatre, as will be described shortly, it proved an unusual reaction from the audience. And you know you are in for a strange evening as soon as you sit down and open the play’s program. To avoid spoilers, it lists a…
Three things you should know about Dream of Autumn: One, there are outhouses. Not in the play. Outside. When you read that Quantum Theatre is staging the play in “the former Park Schenley Restaurant” at the Royal York in Oakland, it may conjure up visions of a faded-glory interior with chaniers, oak paneling and other…
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