5 Oopsies: Shows NOT to take your child to

‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at The Cape Playhouse

Even when you’ve done your homework, even when you’re fairly progressive about theatre you take your child to, mistakes can be made.

Sure, we know that The Pillowman and Avenue Q aren’t for the younger set, but some shows aren’t quite so obviously R-rated.

As a theater critic, I saw a lot of shows and took my son with me as often as I thought was appropriate. If he couldn’t go, I tried to take other young people in my life with me as my plus one. For the most part, they were wonderful experiences that allowed us to enjoy the best of what theatre can be and do.

Sometimes I got it wrong. Take some tips, if you like, from my mortifications.

Little Shop of Horrors

The musical “Little Shop of Horrors” is so campy and fun that it never occurred to me that my 7-year-old might find it scary. To this day (and he is now 23) he will not go see this musical and he has not forgiven me for taking him.

“Mom! It’s about a plant eating people!” he tells me, amazed that I was so oblivious to his fear. “I had nightmares for months.”

So, unless your child already is used to seeing scary shows, maybe skip this one until he, she or they is older. Maybe in middle school.

The Lady With All the Answers

I really thought I was safe with this one. After all, it’s a one-woman show about Ann Landers. I was reading her column by the time I was five, I didn’t think you could get more sanitized than this.

So I took my fourth-grade son to see it at a small Black Box theater. There were maybe 30 people in the audience and we all knew each other, as tends to happen with small-town theater. Everything was fine until we got to the second act.

How many of you remember Linda Lovelace? For those who don’t, she was an American porn actress who starred in the movie “Deep Throat.” Ann Landers was scheduled to be on a television interview show that Lovelace was also appearing on. She didn’t know what “deep throat” meant and as a journalist decided to find out. She also figured that the audience would b as ignorant as she was and would need to be informed.

As the actress on stage went into a detailed, clinical description of the oral sex technique of deep throat, all eyes in the audience turned to look at my son. Both of us were ready to crawl under our chairs. Whether or not he already knew what deep throat was, he certainly didn’t want to find out in public while sitting next to his mother.

Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune

OK, this one I really should have known better, but for some reason, I knew little about Terrance McNally’s 1987 show. Had I known how it started, I would not have taken my teenage son to see it. I might have sent him with a friend, but I wouldn’t have had him sitting next to his mother in the second row at a small theater mere feet from the two naked actors simulating sex.

It was made worse by the fact that he knew both actors and later had to try to have a conversation with them after being exposed to the full nudity.

Once again, it was a situation where we squirmed in our seats, avoided looking at each other, and then clumsily talked about it on the way home.

Any show where a parent or friend is gruesomely murdered

My husband is an actor and for many years did outdoor Shakespeare. Outdoor Shakespeare was a perfect thing to take our son to because we could, without disturbing anyone, remove him from the theater when he got bored—which wasn’t often.

It’s the topic for another article, but our son took to Shakespeare like a moth to light from the time he was three years old. He didn’t understand all the language right away, but he loved the physicality of it and would act out scenes as part of his play.

He would sometimes go to rehearsals with his father and play with the other children who were cast in the show. We not once, but twice, let him stay for the part of the show where his actor-friends and actor-father were murdered gruesomely on stage in “Macbeth” and “King Lear.”

Nightmares once more ensued.

Any play done by a theater you know to be sub-par

When you attend a lot of theater by many different companies spread out geographically, you get to know the general production quality that company puts on. Yes, everyone has a show that flops and most companies have at least one show that shines.

But, as un-PC and undiplomatic as it may be, there are some theaters that just consistently do work that is either mediocre or even painfully bad. When you are a critic, it is your job to attend and to go into the show with no preconceived notions.

However, as a parent who is trying to develop a lifelong theater habit in a child, one should be a little more choosy in what you take the offspring along to.

Without naming names, one of those theaters that consistently produced sub-par performances was putting on a classic with important themes that I wanted my son to see. I took him only to have the show be painfully paced, lacking in strong characterization and with actors who had no sense of the space they were in or, sometimes, what their lines were.

My son came out saying that he didn’t like the show and I felt I had spoiled him on one of the greats of American theater.

Thankfully, I was able to drag him (kicking and objecting) to see the show again at another theater company. When it ended, he jumped to his feet for an ovation faster than I’d ever seen him do before.

It reinforced for me that it matters what productions you take young people to because it has the potential to shape their views on the art and whether they will become lifelong theatergoers.

Plus, you don’t have to hear as often, “You won’t believe what Mom took me to this time!”