Barnaby Hughes

BOTTOM IS TOPS Unlike Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories, which are mostly named for their main character, his comedies have rather different kinds of titles. These differing titles alert us to the comedies’ vastly different subject matter, which is less about particular characters than about particular events. Who, for example, is the main character in Shakespeare’s…

DON’T CALL ME MAD Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” and the life of artist Vincent Van Gogh provide rich, if unlikely material for opera. Although there is little romance to speak of in either subject, there is plenty of conflict. It is the conflict of madness, of inner turmoil told in the…

A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN Less than a month after its pop-up production of The Barber of Seville, Pacific Opera Project (POP) continues Beaumarchais’ trilogy with Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro). Unlike that pop-production, this brief run in two successive weekends at Porticos Art Space in Pasadena and the Miles Memorial…

SCHOOLED BY CALLAS If you’ve ever been to a master class, then Terrence McNally’s Tony Award-winning play Master Class (1995) will seem very familiar. If you haven’t, then you’re in for a real eye-opener. A master class, as its name suggests, is a class given by an expert (or master) to students in a particular…

A MATCH MADE IN HOLLYWOOD Last year, the Pacific Opera Project (POP) put on a show about a serial killer who also happened to be a barber: Sweeney Todd. This year, they have staged a production about a much different kind of barber. Figaro, the titular Barber of Seville, is a matchmaker who’s trying to…

SALVATION IN A STORM Who is the titular Flying Dutchman? Is he a mythological figure, a type of the wandering Jew bound to traverse the earth in travail until his day of salvation comes? Is he in some way the composer, an outsider and a genius yearning for acceptance and recognition? Or he is simply…

A  RESTRICTED BUT  RIVETING ROOM Novelist Ira Levin may be best-known for Rosemary’s Baby and Stepford Wives, both made even more popular by their film adaptations, but as a playwright, Levin wrote the fifth longest-running play in Broadway history, Deathtrap (1978), made less popular by its film adaptation. Five years prior to Deathtrap, Veronica’s Room (originally subtitled…

THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT Race and immigration are popular topics on the LA stage, at least when it comes to more serious theatre. And there is good reason for this. LA is an incredibly multiracial and multicultural city that can be incredibly welcoming to non-white immigrants as well as threatening, persecuting and deadly. Some…

WHERE’S THE SCANDAL? When I first drove past the Zephyr Theatre looking for parking, I saw what appeared to be anti-pornographic picketers on the sidewalk in front of the building. I wasn’t looking forward to wading through that melee. Well, by the time I parked and finally arrived for the show, the picketers were nowhere…

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 paper-mache and the dialogue was doggerel verse. Fortunately, it got better. I wish I could say it got a lot better….

IN PRAISE OF MOZART’S REQUIEM I’ll never forget the first time I heard Mozart’s Requiem. I was wandering through the streets of Paris on a warm summer evening and I happened to stop at the magnificent Madeleine Church on the Place de la Concorde. Inside was a full orchestra with choir and soloists rehearsing the…

HIPSTER OPERA LA Opera should take note of Pacific Opera Project. The upstart company’s edgy productions explode popular perceptions of what opera is and how it should be performed. Pacific Opera Project takes this typically elite art form and strips it down to its barest essentials: stunning music and simple, enjoyable stories. Its latest production,…

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 about the feasibility of performing Shakespeare, since contemporary theatre audiences seem to have increasingly short attention spans – perhaps 70-90 minutes. A typical solution is that of…

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 dramatists have explored these questions over the centuries, Shakespeare addresses them as just one important strand in the complicated plot of his late…

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 only does it boast a large outdoor amphitheatre surrounded by galleries full of Greek and Roman antiquities, but it is positioned towards the sea and away…

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 room for a little light-hearted comedy. City in a Swamp Productions doesn’t take itself too seriously, but is clearly following every step of the election, even to including a reference…

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. Among these, the productions of the Independent Shakespeare Co. (ISC) at Griffith Park are perhaps the most accessible due to the park’s central location, easy freeway access…

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 Magnum Opus Players for stage use are so terrible that they make good comic theatre. And just to be absolutely clear,…

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 classical theatre, and their talented troupe typically breathes new life into old works with aplomb. Yet, their new double-cast production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth seemed somewhat flat, at…

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 penis size, apparently size doesn’t matter, at least, not to most women. Yet, many men seem to be obsessed with the size…