Stuart Sheppard is an award-winning critic, essayist, novelist, and poet who writes “The Hamlet Machine” column for Pittsburgh Quarterly. Follow him: @HamletsMachine.
Pittsburgh Opera’s “Ariodante” – A Sublime Marriage of the 18th and 21st Centuries
Nearly a century ago, the iconoclastic dramatist Bertolt Brecht wrote that “Since it is precisely for its backwardness that the opera-going public adores opera, an influx of new types of listener with new appetites has to be reckoned with; and so it is.” This is a felicitous way to describe what Pittsburgh Opera has done …
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Quantum’s “The Cherry Orchard” is Brilliantly Inscrutable
Often in theater, the more mundane the plot, the more iconoclastic the drama. Thus, if “Hamlet” is essentially about a man who cannot make up his mind, and in “Waiting For Godot” we watch nothing happen, twice, then “The Cherry Orchard” offers us four acts about the refinancing of a mortgage in arrears. What could …
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Kinetic Theatre’s World Premiere of “The Illustrious Invalid”
There is a saying in the world of martial arts that “Control is the mother of speed,” and it could be said that in the world of theater, control – in the form of precise writing, acting, and directing – is the mother of farce. In both cases, when speed is the sole objective, things …
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PICT Theatre’s “Endgame”
“Endgame” is an enormous play set in a small room occupied by four persons who speak absurdly, recounting stories or delivering monologues apropos of nothing — as nursing home residents often do — prompted by memories that float into their minds from the effects of old age, disease, or boredom. Written by Samuel Beckett as …
Pittsburgh Opera’s “In a Grove” – a Revelation of Sound and Sight
In speaking of opera, French composer Claude Debussy praised what he termed “music that’s lit from within,” and this might be the best way to describe Pittsburgh Opera’s world premiere of “In a Grove,” a phantasmagoric reinterpretation of the eponymous story by Japan’s great modernist writer, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. The original narrative, published in 1922 — …
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The War Against Aesthetics in Contemporary Literature
There used to be a saying in the painting department at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, “If you can’t make it good, make it red; if you can’t make it red, make it big,” which, as I understand, was not meant to be cynical, but to mock those attending art school for reasons …
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PICT Emerges from the Darkness with a Brilliant “As You Like It”
It’s certainly more than a little ironic that the last play I reviewed before the pandemic shut down all the theaters nearly two years ago was a work by Shakespeare, set in a forest, and performed by PICT Classical Theatre in the Fred Rogers Studio at WQED. . . and now in reviewing the first …
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Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Myth?
In all the productions I’ve attended over the past several decades, I’ve never seen a playwright attack the play he was adapting in the program notes. Jay Ball writes that when director Jed Allen Harris asked him to collaborate on a production of Homer’s eighth century BCE epic poem “The Odyssey” for Quantum Theatre, he …
The Triumph of “The Current War”
Since the emergence of drama two-and-a-half-millennia ago, the theater’s greatest enemy has always been the plague. It is no coincidence that during the fifth century BCE, as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were writing the first great tragedies, Hippocrates was writing the first great medical treatise, called the Epidemics. Theater, unlike virtually any other art form, …
PICT’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
There is an effulgence to William Shakespeare’s work that is always better to channel than to distort. And this is especially true of the luminous “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” his first undeniable masterpiece, composed during the winter of 1595-96, and performed this midwinter in sly context by PICT Classic Theatre. For when better to have …
City Theatre’s “Downstairs” Showcases Pittsburgh’s Dazzling Acting Talent
The stage of City Theatre’s “Downstairs” is an open maw of things forsaken, a dirty basement stuffed with so many neglected and discarded items—tools and tires and crates and old clothes and worn-out furniture—that it casts the audience in the dingy ether of pathos well before the lights go down. Tony Ferrieri’s overpowering set is …
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PICT Conjures a Ghostly Godot with “The Woman in Black”
“The Woman in Black” is one of those rare creations, like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” that has found success in multivarious forms as a novel, play, and film. Based on Susan Hill’s 1983 book, PICT Classic Theatre’s production uses Stephen Mallatratt’s 1987 adaptation (an unusually safe bet for this company that even wrote …
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Barebones Brings Sam Shepard’s “True West” to Life in a Stunning Production
We tend to think of the American West as director John Ford portrayed it: a vast, mysterious space as cosmic as the Egyptian desert, with the Rockies as our pyramids. The West is an ideal we all hold, a collective mythic dream, something verging on the spiritual the way our conception of patriotism verges on …
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Lear in the Furnace: A Review of Quantum Theatre’s “King Lear”
Attending a Quantum Theatre production can be like traveling to one of those crazy destination weddings where they make you climb up some precipitous volcano to reach the venue, while you ponder the wedding planner’s sanity. You know the view will be fantastic, but is the journey worth it? In the case of William Shakespeare’s …
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Tragedy in a Box: A Review of “The Gun Show (Can We Talk About This?)”
A refreshing pragmatism infuses Quantum Theatre’s production of “The Gun Show (Can We Talk About This?)” (2013) – a kind of low-tech, iconoclastic exuberance that’s reminiscent of the early films of Godard. It’s a classic one-man, story-telling performance – with some audience interaction – that comes off somewhere between Spalding Gray’s “Monster in a Box” …
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Soft-Core Pathos: A Review of Pittsburgh Public Theater’s “The Tempest”
Cleverness is not a Shakespearian trait. In fact, as we have found after more than 400 years, the more we try to shape him, using our own devices, the less he is able to tell us. This is because his chief mode of artistic engagement is the sublime – versus the allegoric, the symbolic, or …
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An Exterminating Angel
Perhaps all drama should be analyzed as the Kabbalists interpret Torah—on many levels simultaneously, comprising the literal, the symbolic, the metaphoric, and the mystical. This might allow us to understand and enjoy what others may miss or dislike, without resulting in one conclusion that necessitates a myopic choice of perspective. I felt this way watching …
Barebones’ “Lobby Hero” Combines Comedy with Tragedy to Stunning Effect
Dichotomies in art usually succeed brilliantly or fail dreadfully. Bringing together disparate forms is inherently risky: it challenges the artist, but even more so, it challenges the audience. In the case of “Lobby Hero,” Kenneth Lonergan’s 2001 play about four people whose lives collide in a random apartment building lobby, barebones productions has dropped this …
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Play Unlimited: The Public’s Ambitious “Hamlet” Rewards on Many Levels
“The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” is a monster of a play: at about 4,000 lines, it’s Shakespeare’s longest—full productions can easily run past four hours. (Hamlet himself has 1,500 lines, which alone would constitute an entire drama). And it’s monstrous not only in word-count, but body-count. By the end, the prince has been …
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Rich Performances Buoy City Theatre’s “Ironbound”
Imagine “Waiting for Godot” set in a New Jersey bus stop. It’s hardly a rarefied trope, as I’m sure many of us have thought we might as well be waiting for Godot while marooned in some cold, lonely place, praying for a bus to appear. Playwright Martyna Majok has taken this conceit and turned it …
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Quantum Strikes Again with “Collaborators”
Just as Colette could say, “There are no ordinary cats,” one could say that there are no ordinary productions from Quantum Theatre. “Collaborators,” the 2011 play by John Hodge (who also wrote the adaptation of the film, “Trainspotting”) is violently alive in a way so few new plays are these days, merging comedy and pathos …
PICT Classic Theatre Triumphs with Fresh, Exhilarating Treatment of Oedipus Rex
Although thirteen ancient Greek poets wrote Oedipus tragedies, only Sophocles’ play, “Oedipus Rex,” has survived. The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote a version, as did Julius Caesar. So did the 17th century poet John Dryden, as well as the 18th century philosopher Voltaire. It has been a foundational story of Western consciousness since Homer referenced it …
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