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The Hamlet Machine

Pittsburgh Opera and Chatham Baroque Blur Performative Boundaries

by Stuart Sheppard

These are certainly synergistic days in the arts. Theater companies are staging operas, operas are staging plays, dancers are speaking in ballets, and everyone is projecting video. Museums are mixing it up, too, but then, they always have. It’s certainly been a win for audiences – at least in Pittsburgh – where we have so …

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PICT’s “Miss Julie:” A Triangle with Four Sides

by Stuart Sheppard

Modern adaptations of classic plays often look like someone wearing borrowed clothes: they don’t fit quite right, and it’s obvious that the person wearing them had to struggle to put them on. But when an adaptation of a play like August Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” (1888) really does justice to its antecedent and fits the subject …

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Total War Over Cocktails

by Stuart Sheppard

If there’s a miracle in Pittsburgh Public Theater’s current performance of the 1962 Edward Albee play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” — it’s that two well-educated couples can argue drunkenly for over three hours and never once broach the subject of politics. (And these couples are of different generations, no less). Of course, this would …

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The Bitch of Being a Witch

by Stuart Sheppard

Sometime around the turn of the millennium – resulting from what I would ascribe to the rise of social media and cable broadcasting — the term “trope” began to lose its classic and pregnant meaning of “figure of speech,” (i.e. an expression used in a nonliteral sense). It has devolved so that it now indicates …

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Let Us Now Heal Wounded Men

by Stuart Sheppard

One thing, as men, that we rarely talk about, are the experiences we have suffered in the form of sexual abuse or trauma. The National Institute of Health found that 30.7 percent of men report having been the victims of sexual violence . . . and more than half of those before the age of …

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Pittsburgh Opera’s “Armida” Sings in a Language Beyond Words

by Stuart Sheppard

The French New Wave director Francois Truffaut once remarked of Alfred Hitchcock that he was the only director who did not require sound for his films to be understood; in other words, the effect of his visual narrative was so strong that dialogue was not really necessary. In much the same way, I found in …

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Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Finds Poetry in Dance

by Stuart Sheppard

I should have known something special was happening Downtown on a windy, wet, early-April evening when I saw a 10-year-old girl literally yanking her mother into the box office of the Benedum Center. I hadn’t seen a child this excited to attend a performance since I witnessed a little boy twirling his red matador cape …

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Kinetic Theatre’s “A Sherlock Carol”

by Stuart Sheppard

Earlier this month I happened to rewatch the 1976 film, “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” which I had not seen for many years, and was amazed by the interiority actor Nicol Williamson discovered in the character of Sherlock Holmes. In this story, Holmes teams up with Sigmund Freud – talk about an intellectual buddy adventure – to solve …

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Quantum’s Sleepy “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”

by Stuart Sheppard

In drama, interiority always triumphs over exteriority. Just look at Shakespeare (even his history plays), Beckett, or Sophocles. And mystery is always stronger than explication. Who wants to be told what to think? But with Quantum Theatre’s new production of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” we find an inversion of these principals, in that the …

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Learning to Fly, Again: Pittsburgh Ballet’s “Peter Pan” Makes Children of Us All

by Stuart Sheppard

Marcel Proust may have needed a sip of lime-flower tea imbued with madeleine crumbs to trigger the memory of his idyllic childhood, but I found myself just as deliciously transported back to my six-year-old psyche as I watched Pittsburgh Ballet Theater’s magical production of “Peter Pan” in the Benedum Center last week. Had this performance …

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Serious Daddy Issues: Barebones Delivers a Compelling “Crocodile Fever”

by Stuart Sheppard

One of the most difficult questions a drama critic confronts is how much of the plot should be explicated during a review? I think it’s a disservice to reveal too much of a play’s action, as it denies an organic apprehension of the experience. Imagine seeing the film “Jaws” for the first time with all …

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Bring the World to Pittsburgh

by Aakanksha Agarwal

In pockets across Pittsburgh, a new and different city is emerging, one in which internationals and creatives are finding a foothold in neighborhoods that long have struggled for new vitality. A prime example of this is in Garfield, where Henry Simonds of Headwater Media envisioned a new kind of social enterprise for his hometown. The …

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The Moon is Just a World that Never Heals: Quantum Nails O’Neill

by Stuart Sheppard

It is a precept of Zen art to incorporate the spaces between objects into a creation, and to consider them just as significant as the objects depicted. In flower arrangement, for example, the areas between the branches are just as important – if not more so – than the branches themselves. We find the embodiment …

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Oh What a Year!

by Marianne Dougherty

When the fab four’s plane touched down in Pittsburgh at 4:36 p.m. on Sept. 14, 1964, I was among the 4,000 screaming fans waiting to catch a glimpse of John, Paul, George and Ringo. When tickets went on sale that spring for $5.90, my aunt bought three: one for me, one for my cousin Linda, …

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The Frick Brings “Once in a Lifetime” Exhibition to Pittsburgh

by Vicky A Clark

In the business of collecting art, father and daughter, Henry Clay (1849-1919) and Helen Clay Frick (1888-1984), were a formidable duo. Helen was devoted to him, never changing Clayton, their Pittsburgh home, after her father decamped to New York. She chose to remain in his shadow, but he did include her early in his pursuit …

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Theater Roundup: Barebones and Kinetic Kick Off Strong Summer Season

by Stuart Sheppard

One of the greatest joys in attending a theatrical performance is not knowing anything about the show beforehand. This blessing is generally squandered by reviewers who extol plot explication above all other critical duties. Thus, I am torn in describing two excellent shows currently running in Pittsburgh: Barebones Productions’ “The Animal Kingdom,” and Kinetic Theatre …

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Where Science Meets Play

by Aakanksha Agarwal

Oscar Wilde once remarked, “Illusion is the first of all pleasures.” Welcome to the Museum of Illusions, Pittsburgh’s newest playground for both the young and the young at heart. Step into Instagram-worthy exhibits — infinity mirrors, spatial puzzles, and a plethora of mind-twisting fun await. Situated a stone’s throw away from PNC Park, this is …

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Painting the Audience: Quantum’s “Scenes from an Execution” is Artistic Theater

by Stuart Sheppard

Although we can’t prove that Freud said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” we certainly can admit the wisdom in this adage, especially as it concerns the theater, where interpretation has turned into an industry for directors, dramaturgs, audiences, and especially, critics. So rather than write a quotidian, interpretive review, our critic decided to …

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The Fine Collection Follows and Augments a Long Line of Pittsburgh Benefactors

by Vicky A Clark

Andrew Carnegie provided the means to establish the Carnegie Institute, but he believed that it should be supported by those who use it. He wasn’t much of an art collector, so he left it to others to buy or give the grand building’s objects. The art museum’s collection grew very slowly at first, with purchases …

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Pittsburgh Public Theater’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” A Sincerely Funny Play

by Stuart Sheppard

There are certain plays we admire for their timeless quality, that somehow not only survive, but thrive over decades, centuries, and even millennia. “Oedipus Rex” and “Hamlet,” for example, have proven themselves in this respect, while others like “Waiting for Godot,” and “American Buffalo” certainly have the potential to join them. Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance …

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An Enchanting Evening in Another World: Chatham Baroque Transports Us to the Realm of Bach

by Stuart Sheppard

Several years ago, when I lived in Cambridge, I happened to sit next to an eccentric man on a flight to Boston, who had a large musical instrument occupying the seat next to him. Suspecting that it wasn’t a cello, I asked what it might be, and he said a viola da gamba. I replied, …

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Barebones Delivers a Visceral Portrayal of Working America in “Skeleton Crew”

by Stuart Sheppard

Usually, critics try to bury the lead, but I’m going to say outright that Barebones Productions may be the most authentic theater company in America today. This is not to denigrate any other company, nor to say that Barebones is the best theater company, but what they have done over the past couple of years …

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