By SHARON EBERSON City Theatre is taking a seat at Pittsburgh’s traditional holiday table, adding a dash of Jane Austen-inspired romance to a menu where Dickensian fare and Christmas-theme…
By SHARON EBERSON At a lanky 6 feet, 4 inches, Brenden Peifer is hard to miss, whether offstage or on. And this year, it has seemed he is always on. So far in 2023, Peifer could be seen in p…
Belfast Company Kabosh Theatre’s Production About Finding Understanding Amid Conflict Comes to Pittsburgh By SHARON EBERSON An officer in a green uniform, on one side of a 30-year conflict…
In Conversation With Writer Amber Ruffin and Costume Designer Sharen Davis By SHARON EBERSON I am going to go out on a pretty strong limb by saying that The Wiz is among the most important m…
By Sharon Eberson You may wonder, is The Nightmare Before Christmas a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie? The stop-motion musical has a spot on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the top 15 Chri…
Passion and Hardship Follow Artist and his Lifelong Muse in ‘Flying Lovers of Vitebsk’ “In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of …
COMMENTARY The Annual Show Is a Collaboration of Three Unions, Benefiting Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank By Sharon Eberson You can feel it all around you. It’s that time when the a…
The Saturday and Sunday, September 30 and October 1, performances of Somewhere Over the Border were canceled “due to performer illness (non-COVID).” Continue to check the ticket site or …
City Theatre Opens 2023-24 With a Musical Work That Began in Pittsburgh By SHARON EBERSON Brian Quijada’s Somewhere Over the Border began with “an epic conversation” between the perfor…
By SHARON EBERSON The North American tour of Moulin Rouge! The Musical was delayed twice by COVID, once when we were all on hold during the pandemic, and again for the first wave of the Om…
By SHARON EBERSON In a full-circle, overdue moment, the words “Hi, I’m Billy Strayhorn,” are at last being said on a Pittsburgh stage. Conjuring the late jazz genius is Darius de Haas,…
By SHARON EBERSON Jazz legend Billy Strayhorn’s story is a Pittsburgh story, in his lifetime and even now, when he is being celebrated with a world-premiere biomusical in the heart of the …
The Blind Musician Stopped by Westinghouse Arts Academy and Won Over a New Group of Fans By SHARON EBERSON The students flowing into the auditorium knew they were in the presence of someone …
The show opens the revamped Greer Cabaret theater; cast member Brady D. Patsy sideline with broken ankle, replaced by Billy Mason By SHARON EBERSON Martha Banta had stayed away from directin…
Q&A: James McNeel and Monteze Freeland on co-productions, revenue sources, fundraising and more to come… By SHARON EBERSON City Theatre’s South Side campus has been buzzing since its…
By SHARON EBERSON From the moment you walk into the Benedum Center auditorium, you know: This is something different. The modernist design that greets you – a bedazzled backdrop and a neon…
By SHARON EBERSON Pittsburgh CLO concludes its summer season tonight with a splash in a very splash season – the 77-year-old company’s first production of Natasha, Pierre and the Great C…
By SHARON EBERSON If by Brouhaha, Squonk means an uproar or cause for commotion, that’s about right for the news that a supersized musical outdoor spectacle is ready for launch. Brouhaha i…
By SHARON EBERSON Merrily We Roll Along is a musical notorious for its lack of merriment. But there is plenty of reason to make merry at the New Hazlett Theater, where the talent onstage and…
Front Porch Theatricals’ Production of the Sondheim Show Marks Leading Lady Griffith’s Musical Theater Directing Debut By SHARON EBERSON The musical Merrily We Roll Along is having a mom…
By SHARON EBERSON The seductiveness of The Sound Inside takes hold with a sneaky persistence. Daring to forgo the fireworks of most mysteries, the cerebral drama instead engages with charact…
By SHARON EBERSON In the midst of their whirlwind rehearsal schedule, Lesli Margherita and Matthew Saldivar – Pittsburgh CLO‘s Miss Adelaide and Nathan Detroit – were on the phone, tal…
By SHARON EBERSON To be Hamlet is to be a student prince bound to seek revenge for his father’s death, and to be indecisive in the task. Anything else is as you like it. More to the point…
Pittsburgh Playwright Theatre Company’s Annual Dive Into Wilson’s Work Was Playwright’s Favorite By SHARON EBERSON “When I first met August Willson, I said I liked Joe Turner the bes…
Elena Passarello Returns to the Stage for the Tony-Nominated Drama by Adam Rapp By SHARON EBERSON It doesn’t get much more barebones than the role of a well-known writing professor being p…