Center Stage
It’s not easy to do wacky physical comedy about a dead-serious subject. And when the time comes for theater reviewers to give informal recognition for Best This and That of the current season, Quantum Theatre’s Pantagleize will be on my list for several awards. One would be Best High Five Seen Anywhere. If you are…
How good a play is Tribes? To answer properly, I’d have to be all thumbs. Then I could give it ten thumbs up. Or nine, anyway. Maybe it falls a bit short of perfection. The point is that multiples and superlatives are needed to describe this play by Nina Raine, currently at City Theatre, because…
One of the oldest themes in drama is the downfall of a great family. In such ancient Greek plays as the Oresteian Trilogy, or in Shakespeare’s King Lear, it is a royal family that comes to grief. In J.T. Rogers’s Madagascar—now being performed by Quantum Theatre—we follow the misfortunes of an upper-class American family, members…
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…
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