241 stories by "Milo Shapiro"
COMEDIC CARNAGE SHARPLY WALKS THE LINE OF TRAGEDY Playwright Yasmina Reza has said, “My plays have always been described as comedy, but I think they’re tragedy. They are funn…
A GREAT KNIGHT, BUT JUST A GOOD NIGHT When a show comes back time and again, the review question is two-fold:  (1) Is it worth reviving? and (2) Does this production offer a re…
CREATIONISM VS. EVOLUTION; RELEVANCE VS. TIMELESSNESS Dubbed “The Trial of the Century” (with rhetorical apologies to O.J.), the actual 1925 trial that inspired Inherit the Wind …
GRIPPING PLAY EXPLORES THE TANGLED WEB BORN OF AN IDEALISTIC WAR Set primarily in Pakistan along the Afghan border, J.T. Rogers' Blood and Gifts begins in 1981, a critical point in the Cold …
CAMPY LAUGHS FROM BROAD CHARACTERS Playwright Zsa Zsa Gershick is best known for her GLAAD and NAACP award-winning play Bluebonnet Court, a drama with humorous moments. With her latest w…
CIRQUE'S PERKS What’s a circus without lions, tigers, and elephants? In the case of Cirque du Soleil's Totem, their eleventh major production in 26 years, it’s a marked impro…
POINTS FOR THE RICH MIX IN BROWNIE Five women consider themselves to be friends because their daughters are in the same Girl Scouts troupe. The bond they share should have been enough to…
THE TORTILLA CURTAIN RISES TO BIG APPLAUSE A frequently-used device in plot is to create two or more distinctively different characters and see how they function once they are thrown togethe…
CORNED BEEF TRASH The Great American Trailer Park Musical has a misleading superlative. The show mirrors A Tuna Christmas and Sordid Lives, in that it takes a humorous look at the goings-on …
SWEET AND WITTY SPOOF IS A CURE-ALL FOR THE BLUES The playbill cover for Coronado Playhouse's highly charming production of The Drowsy Chaperone describes it as “A Musical Within A Com…
CYGNET’S GLASS MENAGERIE SPARKLES It is easy to see why Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie was an immediate hit when it debuted in 1944. In an era of everyone keeping up appea…
MOSTLY EVERYTHING’S COMING UP ROSES FOR ION PRODUCTION For most theater lovers, Gypsy equals Ethel Merman as Mama Rose, even if you never saw her do it. After a single time hearing…
A SWEET TRIP BACK IN TIME Some shows really make you think. Others are designed to move you to tears. And then there’s miXtape, which is pretty much two full hours of cleverly-…
THERE'S TALENT SOMEWHERE IN THIS FAMILY With West Side Story lighting up Broadway only blocks from their home, the Candelarias are inspired that Chita Rivera has cracked open the doors of op…
THE UPS AND DOWNS OF SPENDING TIME WITH STRANGERS It's everyone’s social nightmare brought to life: Â being trapped next to the annoying stranger who won’t shut up. Â But whe…
UNLIKEABLE CHARACTERS STILL LEAVE A RESONATING MESSAGE In Milk Like Sugar, Kirsten Greenidge’s sharply-written world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse, three African-American, inner-city …
