From Styx to stage Posted on May 18th
Dennis DeYoung was once the frontman of the most popular band in America. In 1980, when Styx had multiple albums high on the Billboard charts and played live for more than 1.2 million fans, a Gallup poll made it official.
But for the last several weeks, a fan driving down Belmont Avenue on Chicago’s North Side could easily have spotted DeYoung’s silver-haired head amid the well-worn furnishings of the cramped lobby of the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre, a long-lived but perennially impecunious off-Loop theater company.
DeYoung working at the Bailiwick? Talk about a weird clash of cultures.
The bar bills alone in the Styx glory days were more than Bailiwick can spend on an entire season of shows. But the current production at the Bailiwick is a musical version of Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” penned by DeYoung and opening officially on Monday night.
Trackback URL