Review: UNNECESSARY FARCE Updates the Formula at Saint Vincent Summer Theatre
by Greg Kerestan - June 28, 2024
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...
Review: THE COLOR PURPLE Brings All the Feels at Pittsburgh CLO
by Greg Kerestan - June 28, 2024
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 st...
Review: THE COFFIN MAKER Deftly Blends Genres at Pittsburgh Public Theater
by Greg Kerestan - June 05, 2024
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 exe...
Review: FAT HAM Serves Cookout Chaos Realness at City Theatre
by Greg Kerestan - March 11, 2024
James Ijames's Pulitzer-winning comedy Fat Ham is less an adaptation or reimagining of Hamlet, and more a play ABOUT Hamlet, a response to Hamlet. The characters are all too aware of how their stories and behaviors are mirroring characters from Shakespeare's tragedy: they quote it, riff on it, confi...