Barnaby Hughes

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’ Gilbert & Sullivan trilogy. (If you missed the company’s previous productions of Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado, you can catch remounts running concurrently with H.M.S. Pinafore.) Founding…

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 production of McPherson’s Shining City (2004). Both plays share certain similarities: ironic titles, unexpected endings, sex workers, tense situations, and a preoccupation with life beyond the…

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 dose of scary, sexy entertainment packs a swift punch. Scenes change swiftly, sometimes startlingly, seemingly haphazardly, and nearly always seamlessly, keeping nimble stage manager Shannon Golden and her assistant Tala Said fully…

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 shift and a crimson robe. She is Mary, the mother of Jesus. This simple, but highly effective entrée into…

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 American and set in South Carolina. Porgy and Bess should be rather familiar to Lyric audiences, since it played here just six years…

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 some of the most believable, empathetic teenagers ever put on stage. American Theatre Company has an excellent track record for introducing new works. With…

AULIS WELL AT THE COURT THEATRE With its new production of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, Court Theatre embarks upon an ambitious three-year venture: to present a trilogy of Greek tragedies chronicling the House of Atreus. Guided by the scholarship of translator Nicholas Rudall (founding artistic director of Court Theatre from 1971 to 1994), director Charles…

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 three triumphs of Verdi’s “middle period.” Preceded by Rigoletto, the composer followed it with La Traviata, with which it shares more than just a similar-sounding title. Both are…

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 Company performs them authentically, too, using baroque instruments and staging techniques current at the time of composition. Haymarket opens their short 2014-2015 season with…

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 this show is the work of women, from the adapting and directing, to the performing, staging and costuming. While the all-girl aspect showcases the variety…

GRACE TO THE FINISH 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 well-known and beloved of English hymns. In the  new musical Amazing Grace, Christopher Smith (book, music, and lyrics) and co-librettist Arthur Giron tell…

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 them. Thus, it is incredibly timely that Steppenwolf for Young Adults should mount the present production of Animal Farm. Instead of reading it in light…

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, is the fourth. Its 1945 setting in the city of Piura, Peru, founded by conquistador Francisco Pizarro in 1532, gives the play a somewhat nostalgic…

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 intermission. Based on New Yorker editor Joseph Moncure March’s narrative poem of the same name, Michael John LaChiusa’s musical adaptation is a colorful celebration…

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 bus stop in Kingston, New York. She’s soon joined by a teenaged boy who engages her in conversation. The realism of the…