Barnaby Hughes

A CINDERELLA FOR ALL AGES You might think you know the story if you’ve seen Disney’s animated version, but Rossini’s Cinderella (or La Cenerentola, literally “little girl of the cinders”) is intriguingly different. Rossini’s collaborator, librettist Jacopo Ferretti, hews rather closer to Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tale Cendrillon’”not the tale’s first telling, but certainly one…

LUCIO SILLA REVELS IN YOUTH’S BEAUTY Mozart’s early chamber opera Lucio Silla, written at the precocious age of sixteen, is an excellent example of the bel canto style. Not only is the singing, quite literally, “beautiful,” but there is a steady progression of recitative, solo arias, duets, etc. that showcase the extraordinary capabilities of the…

A MARRIAGE MADE IN CHICAGO Lyric Opera’s season-opening production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro celebrates love and beauty with vibrant colors, light-hearted laughter and sublime music. It is a joyful celebration, one that minimizes some of the darker elements and revolutionary undercurrents in Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto, based on Pierre Beaumarchais’ 1778 play. Hungarian…

SISTERS AND SOLDIERS Following their rather loose and unconventional takes on Greek tragedy and Gilbert and Sullivan, The Hypocrites return to a more classic approach with Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. What gives the production its freshness is the use of a contemporary, idiomatic translation. This helps smooth over some of the awkwardness of the narrative…

GOOD BOOKS? The world premiere production of a new play about the Bible by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson, The Good Book is impressive, complex, informative, and entertaining, perhaps even provocative and challenging to some viewers. Unfortunately, there seems to be simply too much going on, story-wise and production-wise, to make for a wholly satisfactory…

HAYMARKET TRIUMPHS WITH TELEMANN RARITY Closing out their fourth season with Georg Philipp Telemann’s Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Camacho (Don Quixote at the Wedding of Camacho), Haymarket Opera Company beautifully rescues another early opera from obscurity. The composer’s final operatic composition, written in 1761, Don Quichotte’s single act runs slightly longer than an…

BETRAYED BY THE KISS OF BROADWAY In the small confines of the No Exit Café in Rogers Park, one might have expected a more intimate, low-key version of Jesus Christ Superstar, especially considering that the production is billed as acoustic and unplugged. While the singers aren’t mic’d, the four-piece rock/funk band is definitely amped and…

CELLO í€ LA FRANÇAISE! For the second of two concert programs featuring the work of French composers, the celebrated Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit joins forces with the world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The highlight of the concert is Édouard Lalo’s Cello Concerto in D-minor. Written in 1876, the piece begins with a dramatic Lento that slowly…

SMART DRAMA REVEALS POLAR ATTRACTION A world premiere production, Mat Smart’s The Royal Society of Antarctica at The Gift Theatre is easily one of the year’s best new plays. Smart, who worked briefly as a janitor at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, mines that experience in this story of adventurous men and women living and working…

YANKEE DOODLE DUD Of all the plays inspired by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Yankee Tavern has got to be one of the worst. Steven Dietz’s play, which takes place in New York City five years after the attacks, thrives on conspiracy theories. While the first half is more or less a rambling…

A REALLY REALLY TIMELY PLAY 29-year old playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo’s Really Really premiered at Virginia’s Signature Theatre in 2012 before heading to Off-Broadway, where it was helmed by Chicago’s own David Cromer. Colaizzo’s first play generated controversy and buzz; now it’s getting a Midwest debut during Interrobang Theatre Project’s fifth season. Centering on a…

EVERYTHING A FIRST DATE SHOULD BE First Date, an enjoyable new musical comedy that opened on Broadway in 2013, should really be called Blind Date. Its two principal protagonists, awkward Aaron (Charlie Lubeck) and artsy Casey (Dana Parker), have never met before. They’ve been set up on a dinner date by friends. Aaron’s still trying…

BECKETT’S RIDDLE CONTINUES TO CONFOUND Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is not an easy play to write about, let alone produce, act, or even watch. It’s challenging, opaque, and ambiguous. On the surface, it’s about nothing at all. Deep down, however, it’s about everything. It carries a multiplicity of meanings that accumulate like the rings…

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, Capriccio 100+ years also to the 1920s, and Il Trovatore was transposed forward 400+ years to the 19th  century. Only…

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, at Theater Wit. Pam Chermansky joins original cast members Anthony Courser, Molly Plunk, Jay Torrence, Leah Urzendowski Courser, and Ryan Walters to tell this fantastical tale…

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 ever lived. To others, he is a crypto-Catholic who encoded his plays with hidden meanings. To some, he is a gay…

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 Gaetano Donizetti’s Anna Bolena manages to give us a fresh perspective by focusing on the transition between Anne Boleyn and Jane…

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 Theatre from 1996-2008, it now happily resides at the Mercury Theatre since 2011. L. Walter Stearns directs the present production, Eugene Dizon provides musical direction, and…