Greg Kerestan

It's a very good play about a very bad play. That's the capsule version of what you'll see at Justin Emeka's production of Alice Childress's once-controversial Trouble in Mind. Though written in 1955, the mix of seriousness and satire in the piece feels shockingly contemporary, both in terms of its subject matter and in terms of its tone and structure.

Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde has long been a divisive show among theatre fans. Is it a worthy follow-up to the other literary-based megamusicals of the eighties and nineties, like Les Miserables, Martin Guerre and Miss Saigon? Or is it a trashy, boneheaded knockoff of Sweeney Todd with more power ballads and sexy dancing girls?

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 parody of a Vegas show. What Jones and company are doing is a lot more daring than parody: a genuine revival of that sort of big-band rock showmanship for the neo-soul era. And it works.

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 cold to the joyful and gregarious. How, then, does one construct the ultimate Sherlock Holmes story?

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.