Pittsburgh Opera’s “Second Stage Production,” always a sure sign that spring is around the corner, and this year Peter Hilliard and Matt Boresi’s The Last American Hammer, will have …
Once more, Shammen McCune is immersed in an iconic Shakespearean role. In 2017, McCune portrayed Lady Capulet in PICT Classic Theater’s Romeo and Juliet. In 2019, she inhabited Caliba…
By Eva Phillips Selling audiences on a musical that delves into the excruciating morass a woman traverses as she faces grief, mental illness, a stymied marriage, and a romance, of sort, with…
As is customary once its current season is at the midway point, Pittsburgh Opera has made public details on the works to be presented during the next season – the company’s 82nd. The l…
On exceptionally rare occasions Pittsburgh hears the premiere of an opera. Operas in English translations are more common. But it’s a safe bet that the English language premiere of The …
By Eva Phillips Let’s not beat around the bush here (yes, that’s a hair pun right off the bat, but I think it’s the apropos mood for the show)—HAIR is fundamentally chaotic. Which is…
Next up at Pittsburgh Opera is George Frideric Handel’s Alcina – a baroque work that, while centuries old, is anything but “time honored.” The opera (“Alcheenah” to American spea…
2019 was a preponderance of things: chaotic, joyous, concerning, impeaching, meteorologically unpredictable, mournful, hilarious, and so on. But in the sea of adjectives, expletives, and oth…
By Eva Phillips There’s an inescapable dread and ennui that comes with the holiday season. If the despotic demands to buy the best gifts, prepare the best meals, and have the best life-cha…
By Eva Phill;ipsWe exist in a remarkable sort of renaissance for musical theater. Indeed, the past 10 to 15 years has been characterized by an abundance of shows that successfully marry the …
By Eva Phillips It is surprising how a horrific accident or cruel twist of fate can catapult a career. Just ask Buddy Holly, or Lynyrd Skynyrd, or Otis Redding. Or ask the strapping young la…
By Eva Phillips Transcendentalism undergoes many changes as humans evolve. Whether this transcendentalism manifests the thirst to conquer the elements by mastering a flying apparatus, or dev…
By Brian Pope The timeless compositions of Alan Menken have been the heartbeat of many memorable musical tales dealing with the themes of duty, love, and morality. Should Ariel abandon her f…
By Eva Phillips The ways girls behave and the things they do to one another within the overwhelming hives of school, their social structures, and their own minds is the source of great, and …
By Eva Phillips In remarks discussing the nature of violent and racist language, Claudia Rankine cited the post-structural linguistic semiotics of fellow intellectual Judith Butler, stating,…
By Eva Phillips Harper York, not unlike two infamously fabled star cross’d lovers, had a feverish, impassioned vision that she was driven to bring to life. Thankfully, unlike those two lov…
By Eva Phillips Maybe Sweeney Todd isn’t being egregiously hyperbolic when he says there is a place in the world full of shit called London. The plague looms heavy; perfidious law-makers a…
Shakespeare’s Will. Perhaps the two-word title of Quantum Theatre’s autumn 2019 production sums up what many people think they know about the playwright’s wife. That very document and …
Saturday evening, November 9, will mark an important milestone in the long history of Pittsburgh Opera, when the curtain goes up on Florencia en el Amazonas, the first-ever Spanish-langua…
By Eva Phillips I first encountered Lisa Kron’s remarkable, one-person “show,” 2.5 Minute Ride, as a referential framework characteristically unconventional mechanisms through which qu…
By Brian Pope It’s not hyperbole, nor am I ashamed to tell you that, since first watching the film in 2004, I have fantasized about seeing the musical adaptation of Mean Girls. Everything …
By Eva Phillips So much of the history women are forced to learn, accept, and retell is conceived in terms of what is done to our bodies and what our bodies can handle. How fertile are we? H…
By Eva Phillips Good fences make good neighbors, and sturdy walls can make the most combustible of romances—just don’t expect those romances to be as sturdy or reliable. Theatre Factory…
By Brian Pope They don’t call it the nuclear family for nothing. Just ask the Goodmans. Dan, Diana, Natalie, Gabe. “Father, mother, sister, brother cheek to cheek.†Or so Diana s…
By Casey Cunningham Warning: The following review contains spoilers for the play Medea but, not, Not Medea. (That is likely the last bad joke I will make.) This is not a show about Medea, de…