155 stories by "Christopher Rawson"
The Hatch Arts production at Nova Place features six actors playing 13 roles in the Pulitzer finalist play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
The very title is as big as can be, the vainglorious name given the huge ship that sank in 1912, killing more than 1,500 passengers and crew.
In a very old tradition, the Pittsburgh Public Theater has chosen to follow the season's highpoint, a wonderful "Hamlet," with that tragedy's complete antithesis, the Reduced Shakespeare Com…
HOUSTON, Texas " The Ensemble Theatre, the third largest African-American theater company in the country, threw itself a double party on May 12. It was celebrating the opening of August Wils…
We've recently had a number of "we are the world" plays, in the spirit of those lawn signs welcoming all ethnicities and religions. Some were written or conceived before our recent civic div…
Who was the first great American playwright? Shakespeare, of course, on whom American theater cut its teeth for a century or more.
Heisenberg, n. (1) Werner Heisenberg (1901-76), a theoretical physicist. (2) A 2015 play by Simon Stephens now at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. (3) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Princi…
Senior theater critic Chris Rawson and a group of Post-Gazette readers are in London on the Critic's Choice Theater Tour that he's led annually since the mid-'80s. Chris plans to post brief …
Old family snapshots, personal memories and a search for the differing truths behind them might seem common fodder for a poem, but for a play? Sounds more like therapy than theater " but not…
While telling us to turn off our cell phones, artistic director Andrew Paul strictly enjoins us not to give away "the twist" that provides much of the fun.
It's one of the great achievements in American literature, perhaps the greatest in American playwriting: the 10-play sequence of August Wilson's American Century Cycle, inspired by the life …
Sometimes the personal and political seem at odds, but their conjunction can suggest a larger truth, or at least a hope. Such is the case with Dominique Morisseau's "Detroit '67," a 2013 pla…
For the final professional stage production at the grand and ramshackle old Pittsburgh Playhouse, soon to be deserted for new digs Downtown, the powers that be at Playhouse Rep clearly scann…
Inevitably, right from the start, it's all about the performance. Yes, there's a story, but that seems mainly the pro-forma framework on which to erect the one-man performance through which …
The mighty railroad man John Henry, who races a steam drill until his heart bursts. The ambitious, duplicitous manager of "Dreamgirls." An outrageous preacher and a flamboyant BFF in "Wild W…
Pittsburgh theater in 2017 gave us a lot to think about and to look forward to in 2018. As we announce the multitalented, multifaceted Monteze Freeland as the Post-Gazette's 2017 Performer o…
In a tumultuous year, Pittsburgh theater frequently mirrored what was happening in the world beyond " but that's always true. Theater shows us ourselves, positive, negative and deeply c…
They say Christmas comes but once a year, but it sure seems like more as the year turns quicker and quicker. This tends to fray some familiar Christmas traditions. It's one of those good new…
Never match wits with a master. That is to say, when reviewing a genius wit like Oscar Wilde (and who is there like him?), don't try to be witty yourself. You can't measure up.
You may get that the title, "Love, Love, Love," is borrowed from the Beatles' song where it is insistently celebrated as "all we need." But the sour intelligence in Mike Bartlett's sharp new…
NEW YORK " For starters, we had Jane Alexander, Terrence McNally and Tony Kushner " just three of the eight presenters at this year's Theater Hall of Fame induction. It took place Nov. …
Thanksgiving came early " and also Christmas and any other family-gathering holiday on your immediate horizon. But Stephen Karam's disarmingly titled "The Humans" at the Pittsburgh Public Th…
At the end, it isn't just the famous young lovers who die, but also those interesting supporting roles in which Shakespeare specialized, the frantic, babbling Mercutio, fiery Tybalt and, in …
There's safety in the familiar, right? It's 1955. Seven men gather to share stories and drink beer in Charlesetta's coloreds-only roadside bar, a rough-cut place out in the woods somewhere i…
