140 stories by "Aaron Hunt"
RECOMMENDED The Baby Boomers grew up in one of the longest periods of affluence in American history, lulled by a soundtrack of Elvis, Johnny Cash, ABBA and Frankie Valli. The Great Recession…
RECOMMENDED If you saw the pre-Broadway, Chicago run of "Big Fish" and thought it needed scissors and paste, or read the tepid New York reviews, mourning a loss of opportunity when comparing…
RECOMMENDED The brilliance of writer/composer/lyricist and Tony nominee Paul Gordon, the tremulous set design of Kevin Depinet, and Donald Holder's mystic lighting, guided by director Barbar…
RECOMMENDED The mythical line between opera and musical theater further fades with Chicago Opera Theater's mounting of "A Coffin in Egypt." Is it really an opera, as advertised? The composer…
RECOMMENDED If "All's Well That Ends Well" is, as some critics insist, a "problem comedy," then director Drew Martin, by setting the play in the Mafia-land of television's popular series, "T…
RECOMMENDED Playwright Kristine Thatcher has written an important play, and it has landed in the hands of exactly the right theater company for its world premiere. Commissioned and pr…
RECOMMENDED Since their 1997/98 season, Eclipse Theatre Company has focused on one particular playwright for all of their adventures, or re-visited a group of previously examined authors for…
RECOMMENDED It's always an event when Chicagoland can steal director/choreographer Marc Robin away from his duties as artistic director of Lancaster, PA's Fulton Theatre to work his special …
In our world of bullet points and sound bytes, the second act of an entertainment seems presented with the challenge of proving its worth. A bristling Act I is often sadly followed by a defl…
Wonderful things can come of Lyric's decision to present musical theater. New audiences may be caught up in the ambiance, and elect to attend an opera. Lyric's opera audiences could see musi…
RECOMMENDED While Carlo Goldoni's 1747 play hangs on the familiar device of mayhem following in the wake of mistaken identical twins and the supporting stock characters of its time, Evanston…
By Aaron Hunt Every year, New York City Center hosts the celebrated "Encores!” series, imagined as a way to rediscover and celebrate the Broadway musicals that, for whatever reason, sl…
RECOMMENDED There is more than one lens through which to experience Tom Stoppard's "Travesties:" One can know everything there is to know about James Joyce, Lenin, Dadaist Tristan Tzara and …
RECOMMENDED The story of Anne Frank, a budding young Jewish woman entrapped by design, hidden in an Amsterdam attic where she bravely, almost joyously awaited what she felt certain would be …
RECOMMENDED Deborah Zoe Laufer's existential comedy "End Days" sounds like a tongue-in-cheek choice for the Windy City Playhouse's launch of its inaugural season. If their opening perf…
