Milo Shapiro

39 STEPS TAKEN IN CLOWN SHOES In 1935, Alfred Hitchcock released his spy thriller film The 39 Steps to much acclaim. Robert Donat played Richard Hannay, the handsome and dashing man who stumbles, purely by accident, into a crazy situation where he must save England from ruthless spies stealing military secrets. Adding to his woes…

LAMB’S STRIVES FOR AN EYRE OF MYSTERY Playwright David McFadzean is no stranger to Lamb’s Players, having been a part of the company from 1979-1984. From there, his career took him to writing and produced for TV and film, including Roseanne, Home Improvement, Carol & Company, Thunder Alley, and the Mel Gibson comedy, What Women…

ALTOGETHER OOKEY GOOD FUN When American cartoonist Charles Addams started drawing a family of moderately harmless ghoulish folks for The New Yorker in 1938, how could he have expected them to gain huge fame in the world of television (as there was no TV) and multiple films. And he certainly would have been amazed if…

WHO LEFT FROWNING? NUN OF US! When you’re picking shows for your season, you’re off to a good start when you pick the second-longest-running show in Off-Broadway history. One that’s been produced in 26 languages. One that’s spun off five sequels. And perhaps most telling, one that came full circle to be produced in Brazil…

GIVE THREE CHEERS AND ONE CHEER MORE FOR SILLY GOOD FUN In the US, the term “Savoyard” generally means a person intensely interested in, and perhaps highly knowledgeable about, the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. In the U.K., the term refers more directly to some of the original players at the Savoy theatre but, for…

MAKE THIS FUN SHOW ONE TO CHEKHOV YOUR LIST Any time you take one sibling out of a group of three, the remaining two are bound to talk about the missing one. Take that situation further, with two of them living together and the third being a egomaniac who just pops in occasionally — it’s…

DON’T KNOW WHETHER TO LAUGH OR CRY You know that close friend or relative you have who  can talk about the most trivial stuff in their world and you’ll still ask leading questions for more details? Like, “So what did you do when the can opener wouldn’t go all the way around?” But if someone else…

DIAGNOSIS: DANCER Human nature loves to ponder the impossible to answer: What does food taste like to other people? What does a colorblind person imagine color looks like? What is it like to be inside the mind of someone with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)? There may never be a show about the first two, but…

BREWING UP SOME GOOD CHUCKLES IN THEIR KITCHEN Cooking shows are typically feel-good shows. The calm of Martha Stewart. The sweetness of Rachel Rae. The edge of Emeril Lagasse. Of course, it’s easy for them to make everything appear to go well on those high-budget programs; editing allows blunders to be reset and re-shot. So…

THESE PASSENGERS WON’T STAY IN THEIR SEATS! Die-hard fans of So You Think You Can Dance get to know their choreographers. For me, there was Sonya Tayeh (Moulin Rouge! The Musical) : and then there was everyone else. Her startling juxtapositions, demanding symmetry, and physical boundary pushing was unmatched by others. Until now. Now, there…

WHEN KING WAS THE QUEEN OF THE COURT Ask most people what they know about Billy Jean King, other than fact that she played tennis, and there’s a good likelihood that you’ll hear a story about Bobby Riggs. Anna Deavere Smith’s play turns that inside out by focusing on almost everything but that to show…

AS IF TELENOVELAS WEREN’T MELODRAMATIC ENOUGH FOR YA’… As someone who blew off after-school activities because he just couldn’t miss General Hospital (in the grand days of Luke and Laura vs. Elizabeth Taylor), I’m not in a position to cast stones at the many flaws of telenovelas. Quality or not, the format is opium to…

XANA-DOOZY OF A MUSICAL Playwrights of musicals have frequently, with varying degrees of success, taken a successful non-musical movie and worked it into a staged musical. Billy Elliott, Waitress, and Mean Girls are among many movies given a whole new life on stage through song and dance. What makes 1980s’ Xanadu a very different case,…

VISHNU WERE HERE First, a little history lesson:   In the Hindu religion, the god Vishnu incarnated ten times as different “avatara,” which can be interpreted different ways, including “descendent.”   The final incarnation, calling himself Kalki, came to end a long period of darkness, degeneration, and chaos. While knowing this is not critical to following Aditi…