Review: FOREVER PLAID Rises from the Grave at Saint Vincent Summer TheatreSeptember 12, 2025Here's a fun fact about me: I have never played one of the Four Plaids, but I have been in many, many productions of Forever Plaid. There used to be a drawer in my house full of printed-out certificates and plaid-covered dental floss, tokens of my repeat apearances as the 'special audience volunteer' in productions of Forever Plaid across the last twenty years.
Review: TO BATTLE Packs a Literal- and Emotional- Punch at Big Storm Performance CompanyAugust 5, 2025If you saw Very Berry Dead at Big Storm last year (and I hope you did), you probably had some idea what to expect with actor/writer José Pérez IV's latest show, To Battle. You'd be right, but you'd also be wrong. Both shows blend absurdism and realism, comedy and drama, and tease out revelations that contextualize everything until the last minute.
Review: SEAGULL Updates a Standard at Quantum TheatreJuly 28, 2025One of the biggest debates in the world of theatre is over the genre of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece of early modernism, The Seagull. It's been almost universally acknowledged as a tragedy... except by Chekhov himself, who intended it as a comedy.
Review: FROZEN Thaws a Disney Classic at Pittsburgh CLOJuly 21, 2025A refreshingly non-replica production design breathes new life into the sometimes-overexposed property.aOne of the fascinating things about modern musicals is also one of the most frustrating: we are experiencing them as what Richard Wagner called a Gesamtkunstwerk.
Review: A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER Packs Laughs Tight at Theatre FactoryJuly 16, 2025Stripped-down production values but a game cast make the Pythonesque musical fly. There used to be a blog called 'Low Budget Beasts,' which eventually evolved to 'Low Budget Shreks.' Like the title implies, it was a site full of photos mocking community and small professional theatres for staging productions of tech-heavy musicals without the money and supplies to do them right.
Review: SHOWSTOPPERS Sings the Hits at Saint Vincent Summer TheatreJuly 11, 2025If any company in the area can be said to have a formula for its seasons, that is a fair assessment of Saint Vincent Summer Theatre's usual years: a farce, a revue of pre-rock songs from stage and screen, and then a Roger Bean style nostalgic jukebox musical.
Review: SOME LIKE IT HOT Jazzes Up the Issues at Benedum CenterApril 21, 2025It's a wonder Some Like It Hot, the Billy Wilder film, has held up as well as it does without seeming totally creaky and outdated. This is, after all, a 1959 Hollywood comedy, albeit one that is remarkably fluid in its attitudes towards both gender and sexuality.