“Big Fish” at Front Porch Theatricals

The Pittsburgh Tatler: What do you get when a teller of tall tales has a Gradgrind for a son?

You get the conflict that is at the heart of Big Fish, which began as a novel by Daniel Wallace, was adapted into a film by John August, and then turned into a musical by August and composer/librettist Andrew Lippa. It’s a conflict that feels familiar even to those of us whose fathers weren’t fabulists, because at heart it’s about the unbridgeable gulf between parents and children. Much as we yearn to know our parents, they will always have had lives and dreams and memories and secrets we can’t access.