125 stories by "Barnaby Hughes"
GOTH MEETS GIRL During the first five minutes of Lovesick I was beginning to think I had ended up at a school play. The acting was highly exaggerated, the props looked like elementary school…
LESS ADO IS STILL MUCH ADO Shakespeare’s plays tend to be longer than those of contemporary playwrights, typically running 120-150 minutes. This leads many theatre directors to wonder …
DUALITY IN A NOISE WITHIN’S CYMBELINE Are women faithful to the men they love? Or are they so weak-willed and inconstant as to be easily seduced by another? While many writers and dram…
CLASSICAL/CONTEMPORARY MASHUP There are few venues in Los Angeles better suited to productions of ancient Greek plays than the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater at the Getty Villa. Not…
A NATIONAL LAMPOON While the 2012 presidential election has provided entertainment enough, from Donald Trump’s political posturing to the Sarah Palin bus tour, there’s always roo…
A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY Productions of William Shakespeare’s plays grace the Los Angeles stage year round, but in the summer they multiply prolifically and fill public spaces. Amon…
IRREVERENT IN TRANSLATION In the same way that many really awful movies are actually good in the sense of being funny to laugh at (rather than laugh with), so the screenplays chosen by the M…
ANTAEUS’ MACBETH ISN’T DREADFUL, BUT IT DIDN’T FILL ME WITH DREAD The Antaeus Company is not known for shying away from difficult material, especially when it comes to clas…
I AM NOT MY COCK When a new Godzilla movie came out in 1998 the marketing pundits urged, "Size does matter." But when it comes to a woman’s sexual satisfaction with her partner’s…
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL (HIS)TORY People all over the world never seem to tire of Elvis Presley, even if that means watching mediocre impersonators like the "Thai Elvis" at Palm’s Th…
BLACK BOX BASEBALL Rise Above Theatre Movement has proved once again that it is not afraid of performing difficult material. In the young theatre company’s first show, The Last Days of…
THE PERFECT PINOT PAIRING Pinot Noir is presently one of the most popular wine varietals in California thanks to Sideways. First published as a novel by Rex Pickett in 2004 before being made…
INTIMATE OPERA Bringing opera to a wider audience is the noble goal of many a musical entrepreneur, but few succeed as well as Josh Shaw and Stephen Karr, founders of the Pacific Opera Proje…
THE TRIUMPH OF IRONY When Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (R&G) premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966, the critics hated it. While a poor production…
NEW BEGINNINGS "You are bafu!" is an insult hurled many times throughout Danai Gurira’s new play The Convert. Bafu means traitor; in this context, it is used to describe Africans who c…
A YOUNG MAN’S PLAY Would-be writers are often given the advice, "Write what you know." Of the many reasons why writers should write what they know is that it lends authenticity to thei…
BORN-AGAIN PORN STAR? Nudity can have a sacred character to it, depending on one’s motives. There are Christian nudist colonies, for example, whose goal is to return humankind to its p…
WHAT IS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN? While many plays purport to examine race issues, few tackle them head on. Ensemble Studio Theatre’s production of The Many Mistresses of Martin Luther King…
A NEGLECTED CLASSIC GONE AWRY The story of Antony and Cleopatra shares with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet those two indispensable elements of tragedy: love and death. While Romeo and …
RISE ABOVE THEATRE MOVEMENT HANDLES THE TRUTH Just three years after Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men (1989) was produced on Broadway, the play’s popularity was eclipsed by the film…
A TENNESSEE WILLIAMS CARICATURE A number of theatres in Los Angeles have marked the 100th anniversary of Tennessee Williams’ birth by staging productions of his plays. Following upon t…
A FOOL-IPINO FOR LOVE Just as the "problem" of immigration continues to be debated by our politicians, so does it continue to be presented in our theaters. Earlier this year, in the springti…
AN ANACHRONISTIC LOOK AT RACE IN AMERICA There’s no doubt that Arthur Miller’s 1947 play All My Sons is an astonishing piece of theatre. Not only is the writing brilliant, but th…
CIRQUE DU CINEMA When Quebec-based artistic troupe Cirque du Soleil creates a new resident production, they typically design the building to fit the show. Not so with Cirque du Soleil’…
FAUSTIAN PHANTASMAGORIA "There is nothing new under the sun," said a Jewish writer more than two thousand years ago. While such a sentiment may not have been intended to discourage creativit…
