Milo Shapiro

CRAZY FOR LOVIN’ ALWAYS PATSY CLINE Is it a musical? A play with music? A tribute act? A duo cabaret act? Always:Patsy Cline is a little of each, coming together sweetly to be something unto itself. APC tells the true story of Louise Seger (Becky Barta), a devoted fan of country-music legend Patsy Cline, adoring…

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A COMIC BREAKDOWN The Second City school of comedy never held back on giving funny women stage time, even going back to the sixties and seventies.   From Joan Rivers to Gilda Radner to Catherine O’Hara, showcasing funny women has been one of their triumphs, leading many of them to SNL…

DOUBLE TROUBLE IN MINEOLA Paula Vogel, likely best known for her Pulitzer prize-winning How I Learned to Drive, isn’t afraid to tackle tough themes. In The Mineola Twins, she does so by drenching sensitive topics in a twisted, surrealist comedy that is more a series of connected moments than an actual plot. Everything is fair…

ROUTE 66 WAS ONE MOTHER OF A ROAD In John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, we follow along Route 66 the sad travels of Tom Joad and his family, who flee the desperation of Oklahoma’s dustbowl calamity hoping for a safe farming life in California. In Octavio Solis’s Mother Road, there is one…

SHE LOVES ME:AND WITH GOOD REASON! Ah, love. As hard to find as ever, but so satisfying when it is. But what did the ancients (20th-century people) do to find love before Tinder, eHarmony, and the like? Joe Masteroff’s book takes us to the simpler days of Lonely Hearts Clubs, when people exchanged letters (on…

WHERE WILL THIS RED BIKE TAKE YOU? Red Bike immediately presents a huge challenge to a director. Caridad Svich’s script contains no stage directions (and little punctuation, even) and reads like a lengthy poetry slam. This creates both a tremendous burden and glorious opportunity for a director to bring her verse-like prose to life. Moxie…

SIMPLE PLEASURES IN THIS FEAST The Shakers have a song in their hymnal that reads: ’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free ’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ’Twill be in the valley of love…

A HOLIDAY CLASSIC PUT TO SONG: ONE THAT WON’T SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT While it may seem a bit premature to call the 1983 movie A Christmas Story a “classic,” the near-universal popularity of the film and its nostalgic look back at a Christmas in 1940 certainly give it that feeling. True to the film,…

ELF-DEPRECATING HUMOR PAYS OFF It’s hard to go wrong with this script, as writer David Sedaris’s biting wit, which has made him an NPR favorite for years, delights the cynic in us all. While it’s fine-and-dandy getting into the holiday spirit, one cannot be completely blind to the craziness that goes with it. Now multiply…

TWO WAY STREET INTERSECTS AT TOUCHING PERSONAL DRAMA The Last Five Years shares the joys, trials, and failures of two people, Jamie (Michael Louis Cusimano) and Cathy (Racquel Williams), in their deeply-loving relationship. At first, it might seem like they are in two different relationships, almost schizophrenically so, because the songs they sing (and virtually…

SHOULD EVERYONE KISS MY AZTEC? IT DEPENDS: For fans of John Leguizamo, the notion of a full-length musical written by him is a thrilling draw. Whether a fan from his numerous edgy one-man Broadway shows like Ghetto Klown and Latin History for Morons, or his dramatic roles in Carlito’s Way and ER, or his comedic…

TRIBUTE TO THE HITS FROM GOLD STAR Gold Star Recording Studio might not be a household name, but the musicians they recorded for certainly are: Tina Turner, Sonny and Cher, and the Beach Boys are just hint at the long list. Gold Star turned out over 120 Top-40 songs in their thirty year history. With…

WALKING THE STRAIGHT LINE 1982’s groundbreaking film Making Love gave us our first cinematic look at a man torn between the woman he loves and the man who fulfills his needs. Since then, we have been many such stories in the arts about one who genuinely cares about an opposite-gender partner while feeling incomplete because…

SOLID AS AN 80s ROCK Big hair, short shorts, and tons of Madonnawannabees. It’s hard not to love the spirit of the 80s. A huge part of that was the high-spirited music of the decade. Moving past the 70s folk ballad/disco era but not yet into the angst-y 90s, the 80s were loaded with feel…

HOUSE IS IN ORDER, BUT IS THAT ENOUGH? There is so much that is right about Ike Holter’s clever script of Put Your House in Order. Because of that, it is unfortunate that, in the end, it is just a bit unfulfilling — and challenging to explain why without giving away much of what certainly…