Greg Kerestan

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 notions aside and go in expecting one of the best things I'd ever seen. Lucky for us, Front porch is NOT presenting any snoozes this season: they're presenting Maltby and Shire's Baby in the spring, and Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George in the summer. They're great choices, underrepresented shows in the Pittsburgh area without being totally alien like A My Name Is Still Alice, which was supposedly NEVER produced as a fully staged musical until this past season.

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 Gen X. I refer, of course, to the legendary ABC comedy variety show, Whose Line Is It Anyway. Seeing Charles Esten (who you may recall by his improv-era stage name Chip Esten) appear onstage and flash that memorable toothy grin for the first time, I felt like I was transported back to fifth grade again. This was just the first pleasure in an altogether lovely evening of theatre: the artistic equivalent of a good old-fashioned picnic.

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 Ludwig era, which is part of what made Saint Vincent's production of Paul Slade Smith's Unnecessary Farce so surprising: this show maintains the frantic craziness, slapstick, sex and silliness of farce, but brings it into the present by imbuing it with elements of the Coen Brothers' crime comedies.

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 structural cynicism is always proved wrong.

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 recent example du jour, but the archetypal musical downfall is legendary jazz vocalist Billie Holiday. Director Tomé Cousin's production of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill is fascinating, beautiful, but also grueling in its unflinching realism. 

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 exercise in theatrical flexibility that truly must be seen to be understood.

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.