Milo Shapiro

A HERO’S JOURNEY FROM 1862 SPEAKS VOLUMES FOR OUR TIMES Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 first played in 2014 at NYC’s Public Theater, yet Suzan-Lori Parks’ play presciently anticipated the media focus that racism would receive throughout 2017. With the conversation on race being a headline story this year,…

TOO BIG FOR ITS BRITCHES With his touching screenplay as a basis, Lee Hall adapted the 2000 indie  Billy Elliot for the stage, setting his moving lyrics to Elton John’s music. There’s a lot to like in Billy Elliot the Musical: The tale of a boy overcoming judgment and following a dream ran for over 1,300…

WORLD PREMIERE MUSICAL ADAPTATION MADE EVEN BETTER BY BRYCE PINKHAM It’s tricky turning a movie into a play, given that without the auteur’s camera gimmicks and edits, it can be harder to convey mood and emotion. When adapting to a musical, however, songs can create an indelible emotional connection with a character. Not every tune…

THE EFFECT OF GOOD THEATER “You know, maybe someday you will be pretty,” says Beatrice to her teenage daughter Tillie.   Gee, thanks, Mom. Ah, mothers. The Glass Menagerie. Ordinary People. Carrie. Where would theater and film be without the power of dysfunctional mothers? Who better to yield fascinating children, be they adult or still young,…

DON’T CRY, BUT SEE ARGENTINA The crime of being a legend is to be simultaneously loved and hated, while the truth will always be a matter of perspective and interpretation. Eva Duarte, later Eva Perón, was just such a figure. Both adored and reviled, the life of the grandiose first lady of 1940s’ Argentina makes…

THE 90s ARE BACK AND SOUNDING SWEET While the nineties might not sound that long ago to an older crowd, when was the last time you thought about Lorena Bobbitt? Or tamagotchis? Or wondered who was paging you? Yep, the 90s are already ripe for nostalgia and San Diego Musical Theatre is on target for…

IT MAY SUCK TO LIVE ON AVENUE Q, BUT NOT TO SEE IT In the right setting, irreverence is so jovial. Our era of thought-police and political correctness has made it delicious to pervert that which seems simple and pure solely for the sake of entertainment (The Producers and The Book of Mormon are still…

A SWEET SAMPLING OF ANIMAL CRACKERS, ALBEIT A BIT DAY-OLD One can easily see why Animal Crackers was a Broadway hit from 1928-1929, followed by a successful movie version. Start with the zany Marx Brothers, add a variety of vaudeville style acts, connect it all with a wacky little plot and it has “Roaring Twenties”…

HOW’S THE  WITHER? (JUST IN CASE YOU WERE  WUTHERING…) A complicated nineteenth-century story of love and retaliation, featuring 13 characters, could be tough  to pull off in ninety minutes in any case. For playwrights and co-performers Phil Johnson and Omri Schein, the challenge is heightened by the pair opting to play all thirteen in their two-man show. It…

DAMN, YANKEES DOESN’T HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK While many of Jerry Ross and Richard Adler’s songs from the 1955 Broadway classic hold up rather well, Douglass Wallop and George Abbott’s book isn’t tremendously captivating by 2017 standards. Oh, it’s a  likeable-enough musical, but only a stellar production  can sell this aging staple. San Diego Musical…

WHAT A SHOCK In 1845, German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann wrote a disturbing but popular children’s book featuring the perils of children who misbehave. A  century and a half later, in 1998, the popular book was  adapted for the stage by Improbable, a London theater company, and The Tiger Lillies,  a cult British musical trio; together, they  brought the stories…

A FIRST  DATE THAT GOES WELL The device of having characters receive advice from a conscience or someone from their past is tried and true in musicals: They’re Playing Our Song‘s Vernon’s gets help from his Greek Chorus “boys”; Grease‘s Frenchy is (beauty)schooled by the Teen Angel; and now,  First Date‘s Aaron and Casey get input, helpful…

IT’S WORTH SINGING ABOUT GETTING OLDER Perhaps the only thing worse than getting older is thinking about it. So when a nascent theater company puts on a show’”a musical no less’”about the  fear and associated feelings regarding  aging (and the odds of becoming what is referred to as a “Geeze”), some theatergoers may understandably be hesitant to…

A LONG RIDE ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In today’s world of seeing T-shirts in fancy restaurants, it’s almost difficult to envision that, once upon a time, people would dress to the nines for a 16-hour train ride, being attended to by spiffy stewards, waiters, and chefs. But  that’s exactly what hundreds of New York’s elite did…

I COULD WATCH 9 TO 5 24/7 In 1980, an unlikely film trio, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton, was the center of  9 to 5,  an amusing feminist romp with lovable characters. Years later, Patricia Resnick took the screen play she co-authored and created the book for the stage version, featuring   new music by Parton,…

BAD JEWS MAKES FOR GOOD THEATRE, BUT OY SUCH AGITA There’s an old joke: “What do you get if you put three Jews in the same room?   Four opinions.” In Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews, the joke is elevated to a new level when the three strikingly different people are two brothers, Liam and Jonah, and…

LAMB’S SERVES UP A TASTY DINNER WITH MARLENE There’s an old parlor game of trying to decide:   If you could attend a dinner party and choose any guests you wanted around the table, whom would you select?   For Eric Hanes, who visited Paris from Sweden in 1938, he might well have picked the people who…

GIVE YOURSELF OVER TO ABSOLUTE PLEASURE Those familiar with the movie version of The Rocky Horror Show may be shocked to find that there is no typo in the title of the stage version: Here, there is no “Picture” before “Show.” Before anyone had thoughts of a movie about the gang from Transsexual Transylvania, there…

WHEN IT RAINS, IT SOARS Let’s start with the unavoidable down-side so we can end with the up-side. While Cygnet Theatre’s When the Rain Stops Falling is spectacular,  it is terribly complicated and confusing. It’s challenging enough that the 2008 play  time-jumps  across four generations, sometimes with different actors playing the same character, but  Australian playwright Andrew Bovell  purposely holds…