The Public Staging ‘Daddy Long Legs’; Jevon Rushton Plays Backstage Bar

Danielle Bowen and Allan Snyder in The Public’s ‘Daddy Long Legs.’ Photo: Michael Henninger

1) Pittsburgh Public Theater kicked off its 2016-17 season with a chamber musical, The Fantasticks, and apparently the genre has legs, because now The Public is staging another one. Daddy Long Legs is a two-person show adapted from the coming-of-age novel written in 1912 by Jean Webster.  A teenaged girl raised in an orphanage is told that a mysterious benefactor will pay to send her to college—quite a rare privilege for young women of that era—on two conditions. Once per month, she must write a letter to the benefactor describing her progress, and she is never to learn the man’s identity. You can probably imagine what happens in regard to that second proviso. Several movie versions of Daddy Long Legs have been made; the musical premiered in Ventura, Calif., in 2012 and has been a hit off-Broadway and elsewhere. 7 p.m. Performances continue through April 9. The Public presents it at the O’Reilly Theater, 621 Penn Ave., Cultural District. (MV)

2) Pittsburgh native Jevon Rushton headlines today’s installment of the weekly jazz series at the Backstage Bar. Rushton has been playing drums since he could hold a stick, reportedly blowing away audiences since he was six. He attended the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School, where he studied under Roger Humphries, another Pittsburgh native and jazz-drumming luminary. In his brief career Rushton has received multiple awards and performed with the likes of Kirk Franklin, Sean Jones, and Dwayne Dolphin. He will be performing starting at 5 p.m. at the Backstage Bar in Theater Square. No Cover. 655 Penn Ave., Cultural District.

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