Milo Shapiro

HOW TO SUCCEED IN PRODUCING A MUSICAL Offices tend not to be much fun, which is why they are ripe for exploring undertones of emotion and comedy in scripts like Office Space, Working Girl, 9 to 5, and NBC’s The Office. Throw in some music (okay, a LOT of music) and dynamic choreography and you’ve got a…

HOPE WITH CALLOUSED HANDS: A QUIET MASTERPIECE REVISITED John Steinbeck’s play Of Mice and Men came quickly after the success of his novella by the same name. In fact, the play opened on Broadway in 1937 while the book was still on best sellers lists. In each telling, Steinbeck draws upon his own teenage experiences…

WHEN THE DEAD STILL RUN THE ROOM Grief, memory, and the long shadow of unfinished business In this play of four characters, a fifth looms large, though never seen: the titular Louisa, late wife to Steven (James Sutorius), mother to Celia (Faline England), and grandmother to Lucy (Caroline Renee). She’s been dead for nearly forty…

A NEIGHBORLY NICE LADY— WITH BUZZ ALDRIN IN HER HEAD Susan Clausen shines in Ian August’s funny, surreal one-woman ride Reading the press blurb about Donna Orbits the Moon left me scratching my head, wondering what it was actually about. Having seen it now, I get why. Some shows are hard to describe well. That…

A VINTAGE-STYLE HOLIDAY CONCERT A warmly nostalgic night of classic music, crooning, and dance Imagine that it’s 1962. You and your spouse decide to get a sitter and go down to the “club” because they’re featuring an upbeat Christmas music show with dancers and a small live band. If the club did the show really…

THE SOUP OF THE DAY IS A DARK BROTH INDEED There’s a game some couples play when they’re out and about: they make up lives about the strangers they see in places like diners. Part of what makes it work is that they’re never actually going to know a thing about those people. Until playwright/director…

NOSTALGIA LOADED — AND EYE SAFETY ENSURED The 1983 film A Christmas Story may not have been universally crowned a “classic” when it premiered, its near-universal popularity and nostalgic look back at Christmas in 1940 have long since earned it that status. San Diego Musical Theatre brings back the musical version in which we meet…

HER MIND, OUR MEMORY Kenneth Lonergan’s family fissures hit hard in Backyard Renaissance’s intimate staging What an incredibly robust month November has been for smaller theaters in San Diego: the fun of To My Girls at Diversionary; a gloriously intense one-woman performance in Beauty’s Daughter at OnWord; a delicious character study in Master Class at…

BEAUTY GETS MORE THAN SKIN DEEP Beauty’s Daughter is a one-woman play by Dael Orlandersmith that centers on Diane, a young Black woman growing up in East Harlem, as she navigates a world marked by violence, beauty, trauma, and resilience. Marti Gobel portrays six different characters consecutively before returning to the first one, Diane. No…

CALLOUS CALLAS CASTS A CAPTIVATING CHARACTER Maria Callas (1923-1977) was unquestionably one of the finest opera singers of the twentieth century. The mix of her great talent with her being difficult, petulant, and opinionated only served to heighten people’s interest in her and boost her fame, as did her very public love life, including a…

A DELIGHTFUL LITTLE SCRIPT—FOR SHAW! Best known for Pygmalion (which was adapted into My Fair Lady), Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw challenged people’s views on social issues, including class structure. In his Arms and the Man, there’s a clear message of celebrating the letting go of putting on airs, as well as a hard look at…

SMALL IS EPIC In his exceptional how-to book Storyworthy, author and storyteller Matthew Dicks advises us to stop recounting tales that few can relate to — like the time you climbed Mt. Everest — and instead share stories that help others see themselves in similar moments. That’s how a story connects. Robert Montano does exactly…

GLITTER, GHOSTS AND GOLDEN-AGE GLAMOUR: DESPITE THE SCRIPT, CYGNET’S FOLLIES MAKES A BIG SPLASH AT THE JOAN Cygnet Theatre staked the debut of their new theater complex “The Joan” on a fairly solid bet: Stephen Sondheim. Given he is one of the great darlings of the theatre world, a musical with a score by Sondheim is a smart…

BESIDE MYSELF WITH PRAISE When the lights came up at the end of Act I of Beside Myself, my immediate reaction was, “No!” I was so invested in the proceedings of this stupendous world premiere that waiting fifteen minutes to see what happens next seemed criminal. Such is the payoff of Paul Slade Smith’s writing…

HOW TO SUCCEED IN HISTORY WITHOUT REALLY TELLING IT Meet Lettice Douffet (Bobbi Randall), an eccentric tour guide at Fustian House, a drab Tudor mansion. Burdened with delivering its painfully dull history to visitors, she finds the plain facts intolerable. Instead, Lettice gradually begins to embellish wildly, weaving dramatic tales of intrigue, passion, and bloodshed…