PITTSBURGH THEATER REVIEWS

Remember Jones is funny, but he isn't a joke. There's a knowing kitsch value to the cabaret artist turned rock revue revivalist's stage presence: he looks like Elton John, dresses like Liberace and sings like Joe Cocker, on a stage full of bandstands and matching-jacketed musicians. But this isn't a...

In some ways, Lolita Chakrabarti's Life of Pi, adapted from the novel by Yann Martel and directed by Max Webster, can feel like a grown-up version of the puppet-heavy visual multimedia spectacles often seen in high-end children's theatre....

It has long been posited that Sherlock Holmes is difficult to adapt well, because the nature of Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Sherlock Universe' is so fragmented. Most of his memorable characters apppear only once and rarely interact; even more vexing, Holmes's own behaviors vary from the misanthropic and c...

CLO's seasonal favorites may not be new, but they have yet to wear out their welcome....

I keep saying it and it keeps being true: it doesn't really matter what Front Porch announces for their season, because 'Front Porch Presents' is a strong enough endorsement on its own. If you told me Front Porch was presenting a notorious snooze like In My Life or Lestat, I'd put my preconceived no...

Like the King of Pop himself, this adventurous jukebox psychodrama blends darkness with joy....

Out of nowhere, the silent film classic The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari rocketed back into the zeitgeist about five years ago. It's name dropped, adapted, referenced everywhere from art films to children's cartoons. ...

Max Martin's songs have never made more sense than they do in this jukebox confection....

City Theatre's brand, the last decade or so, has often been less is more. Tiny casts, simple sets, show don't tell, but also don't show. The last two or three seasons have included an increased focus on immersive unit sets, but the principle still stood... not anymore, though....

Front Porch's biggest show yet is also one of its best....

Swerving between low comedy and high tragedy, this outdoor O'Neill drama stuns and swelters, even on cool nights....

The summer season ends with this kid-friendly spectacular....

Sometimes, smaller, dumber and cheaper is a compliment, not a put-down, as in this miniaturized Mel Brooks classic....

Irving Berlin's songs are both timeless, and also thoroughly of their own time and place....

José Pérez IV's new tragicomedy feels like it's always been around, but still remains refreshing and new....

I'll admit, I had a huge smile on my face all the way through The Music Man that had little to nothing to do with the production itself. You see, I'm a nerd and a theatre kid in my thirties, and to that demographic, there was a cultural phenomenon just as big as Monty Python and Star Trek were to Ge...

The funny thing about farce as a genre is it seems to be perpetually stuck in the past; the constant misunderstandings, cross-dressing and door-slamming seem tied to a time before the internet, before cell phones... hell, maybe even before the Pill. It's a Ken Ludwig world that seems tied to the Ken...

As a literature major, part of me has always found it unbelievable that tight, two-hour adaptations of Alice Walker's The Color Purple have been so successful. The novel is sprawling, complex and dense, with an epistolary structure not unlike the similarly tricky-to-adapt Dracula. Nonetheless, my st...

There is no greater musical theatre staging preservationist than Baayork Lee, who has devoted much of her career to preserving and restaging the original direction and choreography to A Chorus Line. ...

It's a tale as old as time: the downward spiral of a once-brilliant talent into substance abuse and early death. It's the second half of the 'star is born' template, and it never goes out of style... because it sadly never stops happening in real life. The list is long, with Amy Winehouse as the rec...

Folks, this is a first. I've been writing reviews for BWW for about ten years now, and rarely have I seen a new work that so deftly and fearlessly blends genres and tones together. Director Monteze Freeland and playwright Mark Clayton Southers have achieved the impossible: The Coffin Maker is an exe...

It's an oldie but a goodie, and packed with oldies-but-goodies....

It's the best episode of 90s SNL that you never saw....

I've posted many times about how much of an institution Saint Vincent Summer Theatre has become: you know you're going to get a slapstick farce, a Golden Age or earlier revue, and usually a musical comedy with pop oldies. ...

Oscar Wilde's comedy of manners, lightly reconceived as a screwball farce, is a refreshing summer treat....