Indeed it is …

… It’s getting cloudy in Philadelphia | Superfluities Redux. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The full-time staffer at the theatre desk of the Inquirer, Howard Shapiro, was recently reassigned to cover South Jersey, and it appears to be an open question whether or not Shapiro will be replaced (though Wendy Rosenfield, who freelances on the theatre pages of the Inquirer, told me yesterday that Shapiro was “irreplaceable,” in at least a few senses of the word; Rosenfield and fellow freelancer Toby Zinman will continue to review for the paper). Unless I miss my guess, this is the first time in decades that neither theInquirer nor the Daily News has a full-time staffer assigned to cover theatre in Philadelphia.

Howie is not only a first-rate theater critic; he is also a first-rate writer and a first-rate person. This is, to put it mildly, a dumb decision.