Miss You Like Hell
Quiara Alegría Hudes (Book & Lyrics); Erin McKeown (Music & Lyrics)
City Lights Theater Company in Co-Production with Teatro Visión
Many a book and movie through the years have chronicled “the great American road trip” across the continent as individuals, friends, and families have ventured into the plains, mountains, and lonely towns in between to leave behind troubles searching for new freedom, resolution, and/or peace. From the Joad family to Jack Kerouac to Thelma and Louise, their trips full of unexpected, new adventures, friendships, and self-realizations have often resulted in a destination different than first anticipated – geographically and/or personally – and if not aways paradise, the general outcome of such an epic trip has been a significant and important discovery of self and of others.
In their 2016-premiering musical, Miss You Like Hell, Quiara Alegría Hudes (book & lyrics) and Erin McKeown (music & lyrics) send a troubled teenage, mixed-race girl and her estranged, undocumented, Mexican-born mother across the country in a borrowed, red jalopy of a truck. Their version of this American tradition is one that has rarely been produced on paper or stage – a trip through the freeways and backroads of America by someone other than whites. In co-production with Teatro Visión, City Lights Theater Company presents a rousing, compelling, and moving Miss You Like Hell that in the end provides a stomach-wrenching punch to bring home to us all the current, devastating effects of our broken, immigrant policies and practices
Please proceed to Talkin Broadway for the rest of my MUST-SEE review.
Rating: 4.5 E, MUST-SEE
Miss You Like Hell continues through February 26, 2023, playing through February 19 at City Lights Theatre Center, 539 South Second Street, San Jose and playing February 23 – 26 at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, 1700 Alum Rock Avenue, San Jose. Tickets are available online at www.cltc.org .
Photo Credits: Christian Pizzirani
