Millvale Music Festival Kicks Off; Front Porch Theatricals Opens ‘Falsettos’ (Fri., 5/16/23)

Friday, May 19 & Saturday, May 20

1) The free Millvale Music Festival returns for an annual showcase of myriad local musicians, who will play indoor venues, like Mr. Smalls, and outdoor venues, like the GAP Park. Acts include Liz Berlin, Gene the Werewolf, Bad Judgement, Brad Yoder, Dumplings, Fuck Yeah, Dinosaurs!, Mark Dignam, Melina Bowser, My Favorite Liar, Steel Mill Rising, Ras Prophet, ShugMac, and Westinghouse Atom smasher. Many visual artists, comedians, and spoken word artists/poets will also participate in the festival and have their works on display/perform. Check the festival’s website for a full line-up and list of venues, which include popular bars, cafés, and craft breweries. All over Millvale.

FALSETTOS (musical) by William Finn and James Lapine. Front Porch Theatricals. May 19 – 28. 

2) There is a category of live theater called “really good musicals that you probably won’t see at Benedum Center, because they don’t quite have big-brand-name status or they’re not on tour, or whatever.” Front Porch Theatricals is a company proudly producing that type of musical for Pittsburgh audiences, with a focus on shows that have thematic substance as well as great music. Up this month at Front Porch is Falsettos, which—lest we forget—won the Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Score in 1992. William Finn and James Lapine created Falsettos by merging two of Finn’s previous one-acts into a feature-length piece, and the result is remarkable: part zany comedy, part ominous tragedy. The show is set in New York in the early 1980s. A guy leaves his wife to move in with a male lover, while trying to stay close to his freaked-out young son and not get too freaked, himself, when his dumped wife and his therapist become an item: that’s the zany setup. The ominous part comes with the onset of a mysterious epidemic in 1981. Front Porch presents Falsettos at the New Hazlett Theater. 8 p.m. 6 Allegheny Square East, North Side. (M.V.)

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