125 stories by "Barnaby Hughes"
WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO (NOT THE BRITISH) With Puccini's Tosca, Lyric Opera has done one update too many this season. Don Giovanni was bumped up 300+ years in time to the 1920s, Ca…
THE HOTTEST SHOW IN TOWN One of the best-reviewed and most popular Christmastime shows, The Ruffians' Burning Bluebeard, returns beginning tonight for three weeks only through Jan. 4, 2015, …
CST STAGES A FRESH AND FANTASTICAL PERICLES William Shakespeare is a man of many faces. To most, he is quite simply a master of the English language and one of the greatest playwrights who e…
RADVANOVSKY IS REGAL IN ANNA BOLENA With so much filmed and written about the six wives of Henry VIII, the Tudor period is perhaps one of the most familiar eras in English history. Yet Gaeta…
THIS SCHOONER SAILS IN ON YULETIDE EUPHORIA A joyous holiday tradition, The Christmas Schooner has been warming Chicagoan hearts for nearly two decades. Following a lengthy run at Bailiwick …
TELL US SOME MORE Turin, Italy's Teatro Regio Torino opened its first ever North American tour with a magnificent concert performance of Gioachino Rossini's William Tell at the Harris Theate…
THE HYPOCRITES PLAYFULLY ROCK THIS BOAT A nautical joyride of musical mayhem, belly laughs, and unadulterated fun, this world premiere adaptation of H.M.S. Pinafore completes The Hypocrites'…
ARMACOST LIGHTS UP THE NULLITY OF SHINING CITY Hot on the heels of Steppenwolf's production of Conor McPherson's newest play The Night Alive comes Irish Theatre of Chicago's current producti…
HOLLYWOOD HORROR STORY Director Michael Driscoll brings B-movie exploitation antics to Strawdog's Hugen Hall stage in Darren Callahan's Desperate Dolls. This over-the-top, no-holds-barred do…
MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY It begins with a woman taking a bath. The lighting is low and there are dozens of candles spread about the set. She slowly gets up and dries off, donning a linen s…
LYRIC DOES THE BESS THAT IT CAN After two outings to Spain (Don Giovanni and Il Trovatore) and one to Paris (Capriccio), Lyric Opera is bringing audiences something homegrown, composed by an…
A HOLIDAY FOR HUMANITY Playwright Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, and his Speech and Debate"with its with crackling humor and vivacity"has …
A TREASURE TROVATORE There's nothing subtle about Verdi's ambitiously conceived Il Trovatore (The Troubadour). Grandly realized and magnificently staged by Lyric Opera, it is one of the thre…
EXCELLENT BY ALL APPEARANCES It is rare enough to find early operas staged in the U.S., so to find a whole company devoted to their performance is truly extraordinary. Haymarket Opera Compan…
WHERE BLACK BOX EQUALS COFFIN Just in time for Halloween, The Chicago Mammals are performing their All Girl Edgar Allan Poe. Apart from the original source material, most everything about th…
GRACEFULLY AMAZING John Newton (1725-1807) was many things: a slave trader, a sailor and a clergyman. Yet today he is chiefly remembered as the author of "Amazing Grace," perhaps the most we…
THE FARM-TO-FABLE REVOLUTION IS HERE One of the most extraordinary things about George Orwell's novels is their prophetic power; they are perhaps even more relevant now than when he wrote th…
A CONFESSION ABOUT SWEENEY TODD Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been four days since my last confession. I saw Porchlight Music Theatre's production of Sweeney Todd at Stage 773……
MISSING MECHE Although Nobel Prize-winning writer Vargas Llosa is known primarily as a novelist, he has also written nine plays spanning a period of sixty years. La Chunga,written in 1986, i…
SOME MAGIC IS ADDED, SOME MAGIC IS TAKEN AWAY South Africa's Isango Ensemble is undoubtedly full of talented actors, singers, and musicians, but doesn't quite have the specialized skills req…
PARTY LIKE IT'S 1928 A riot from start to finish, Bailiwick Chicago's The Wild Party is a breathless, exuberant, fast-paced production running for an hour and forty minutes without pause or …
THIS CAPRICCIO IS NO CAPRICE The brooding romanticism of Capriccio's opening sextet sets the tone for the introspection that is to follow. Instead of a dramatic overture and crowd-pleasing a…
PUZZLING THROUGH THE CRYPTOGRAM IS WORTH THE EFFORT The title alone should have been clue enough that this was going to be a difficult play, but nothing could have prepared me for the lack o…
A VANDAL OF AN ENDING Thirty-something actor and writer Hamish Linklater's The Vandal is one of those plays that starts well and ends poorly. It begins with a middle-aged woman waiting at a …
THE MANY LOVE(S OF) DON GIOVANNI Why does Chicago love Mozart's Don Giovanni so much? Well-received as Lyric Opera's first production back in 1954, and revived many times over the ensuing de…
