By Eva Phillips It is unsurprising that Goethe makes an appearance, in the beautiful yet eviscerating coming-of-age musical Spring Awakening. After all, the inimitable musical, with music by…
By Eva Phillips Overly melancholy Irish folk music really does something to me. Rousing, but also melancholy, Eastern European folk music REALLY does something to me. The two musical cosmose…
By Eva Phillips There is a particularly arresting moment in folkLAB’s newest production, Nicole Gallagher’s mija: one bitch’s tale, that for the sake of the integrity of the story, and…
By Brian Pope They say that youth is wasted on the young. Well, I don’t know much about the “They” who coined that cliche, but I am sure that They have not yet seen Alumni Theatre Comp…
A season of uncommon women and others take Quantum Theatre audiences from a Chilean peña, to Shakespeare’s hometown, to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The journey during Quantum’s 29t…
By Eva Phillips A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is one of those shows that vividly proves that the Greco-Romans of the B.C. era really knew how to live with drama nerd flair. …
By Casey Cunningham How do you save a person who doesn’t want to be saved? How do you convince a person that life is worth living when life has never once been kind? Is it nobler, (to para…
By Eva Phillips Pittsburgh Classic Player’s A Streetcar Named Desire is not an easy thing to sit through. This is in no way a reflection on the quality of the show as a whole—which is ex…
By Eva Phillips There is an embarrassing truth that should be addressed before I embark on a review of Stage 62’s Mamma Mia! I could write about Mamma Mia! in my sleep—not just because o…
By Eva Phillips Mob bosses. Murderous fathers. Ill-fated romance. Deceit and chicanery. Florida. Moliere. If these somewhat incongruous elements seem like a combustive recipe for intrigue an…
Tennessee Williams is a master of diffusely permeating the social consciousness and cultural lexicon. His inimitable style is why his works are held in the esteemed canon for theatre and fil…
In 1999, at the zenith of my adolescent paranoia that was fixated on the imminent cataclysm of Y2K, a film called Blast From the Past spoke to me and my fretfulness. The film centered around…
Pittsburgh Festival Opera, our local “Intimate Opera Theater,” has added much to the summers’ musical offerings for some years now, and the ambitious company’s new season begins F…
By Linda Harkcom Last weekend I was assigned to cover Split Stage’s production of Titanic The Musical at The Lamp Theatre in Irwin. I’ll admit that I didn’t know much about the show, o…
By Eva Phillips Gone with the Wind was the perfect storm of an unfathomably successful novel, insatiable industry hype, and the biggest names (and egos) in Hollywood in one tempestuous press…
A Letter from the Editor, Well, y’all, we’ve fought our way tooth and nail to the golden promise land of Summer. The Spring saw some phenomenal changes and growth for all of us at PGH…
Monsters are real. Danger can happen. And theatre as we know it will never be the same. Don’t fret. This isn’t some Orson Welles-esque announcement warning of Godzilla’s doomed fora…
Pittsburgh is a city that is proverbially filled to brim with theatre companies and artistic collectives. Which is by no means a gripe—that there are well over twenty theatre companies, a …
Kinetic Theatre is one of the few companies in Pittsburgh that prospers on the nomadic model. Helmed by tireless and resourceful Producing Artistic Director Andrew Paul, who has directed all…
Oklahoma! at Pittsburgh CLO (June 21st-June 30th at the Benedum) I have a morbid fascination with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1943 Musical Oklahoma! (their first ever musical collaboration, …
Soulful tributes to some of the world’s most beloved–and sometimes enigmatic–singers are the artistic specialty of Daphne Alderson. Aptly described as a chanteuse, Alderson far ex…
For over thirty years, Point Park University has hosted International Summer Dance, a six-week intensive program offering conservatory style training to students in Ballet, Jazz, and Mode…
By Linda Harkcom The Pittsburgh CLO is putting the fun in musical theater this summer by producing the hilarious Spamilton An American Parody at the Greer Cabaret Theater in Pittsburgh. I re…
By Eva Phillips A surreal comparative train of thought I often entertain is pondering the striking differences between my father’s world and my own. When I turned 21 in 2012, I was paying …
By Eva Phillips Imagine the most elaborate world you can. Think of “elaborate” in this context in its strictest biological meaning—producing a new substance from original constituents …