In The Spotlight: Coffee County High School's Alyssa FreezeMay 22, 2024Today’s spotlight is focused on Alyssa Freeze, a senior at Coffee County High School, who garnered Spotlight Award attention for her performance as Janet Van De Graff in The Drowsy Chaperone. This fall, Alyssa begins her college career at Nashville’s Lipscomb University.
In Tuesday's Spotlight: Nashville School of the Arts' Jayden MurphyMay 21, 2024The two winners of the Outstanding Lead Performer Spotlight Awards in Nashville will travel later this summer to New York City to take part The Jimmy Awards and to compete for top honors, which recognizes the nation’s leading high school musical theater performers.
In Today's Spotlight: Ravenwood High School's Raleigh RisserMay 20, 2024In today’s spotlight is Raleigh Risser, a senior at Williamson County’s Ravenwood High School, who garnered Spotlight Award attention for her role as Fiona in Shrek: The Musical. She will pursue her BFA in Musical Theater at Ithaca College.
In The Spotlight: Coffee County High School's Edgar GuzmanMay 19, 2024Today we begin a six-part series of interviews with the Spotlight Awards’ nominees for Outstanding Lead Performer, shining the BroadwayWorld Nashville spotlight on the talented young actors who will compete for the opportunity to represent Nashville, Middle Tennessee and TPAC at The Jimmy Awards.
Review: Nashville Repertory Theatre's POTUS...May 12, 2024Nashville Repertory Theatre closes out its 39th season with one of the best laugh-out-loud comedies we’ve ever seen on a Tennessee Performing Arts Center stage: Selina Fillinger’s uproariously funny, if all-too-real, POTUS or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. Directed by the acclaimed Lauren Shouse and performed by an all-star cast that’s filled with seven of the best actors in Nashville, it’s a smart, incisive and topical farce that’s certain to lift your spirits and feed your soul.
Review: Studio Tenn's Season-Closing CABARETMay 11, 2024Paul Vasterling, the longtime CEO and artistic director of Nashville Ballet, makes his debut as a director of musical theater with his revival of Cabaret – which he also choreographs – in a much-heralded and eagerly anticipated production for Franklin-based Studio Tenn. The timely and sumptuous revival allows audiences an opportunity to consider the prescience of the classic Broadway musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb that debuted in 1966 and which has continued to fascinate and challenge artists of the theater the world over almost 60 years later.
Review: YES THE MUSICAL at Dream HotelMay 4, 2024Meanwhile, theater aficionados, bachelorette parties (aka “WOO! girls”), fun-seekers and all the assorted denizens of Music City’s Broadway district will be buying up all the sunglasses in order to protect their eyes from the over-the-top glitz and glamour provided by the physical production of Yes, A Musical Comedy’s theatrical magic and technical wizardry and the pure joy of Blaine Hopkins’ book and lyrics, Garrett Kotecki’s music and lyrics and Joel Waggoner’s everything else (including additional words and orchestrations) that make the show so entertaining, so delightful and, lord have mercy, so much fun!
Nashville Repertory Theatre's Stellar 39th Season Continues With Superb Prooduction of THE COLOR PURPLEApril 9, 2024Led by a bravura performance from Carli Hardon, Nashville Repertory Theatre’s production of The Color Purple – the musical based on the beloved Alice Walker novel – is yet another extraordinary success from the professional company in the midst of its 39th season. Directed with complete self-assurance and confidence by Reggie Law, with evocative and energetic choreography by Joi Ware and the musical direction of Dion Treece that results in one of the most emphatically sung shows in Nashville Rep history.
Chris Cooper And Cast Present 'Sublime' Version of [title of show] at MTSUApril 3, 2024Cooper’s clear and focused direction of [title of show] ensures that the action that transpires over the course of 90-plus minutes holds your attention, reminds you of people you know and delivers a pretty spot-on depiction of what real life is all about. With the able assistance of musical director Angela Tipps (the only non-student involved in the production, except for the professors who serve as mentors of the student-led creative team and production crew) and choreographer Paige Lovell (who provides the quartet of actors some fancy footwork that enlivens the proceedings), Cooper and his ideally cast quartet of actors, in this critic’s estimation, deliver the goods and then some.
Could LEGALLY BLONDE THE MUSICAL Be Belmont University Musical Theatre's Best-Ever?April 1, 2024With its silver anniversary year within sight, Belmont University Musical Theatre concludes its 24th season with what is perhaps its best show yet: Legally Blonde, The Musical. Featuring a remarkable cast of student performers, including most of the Class of 2024, which is arguably the most accomplished and most promising group of students assembled in the program’s quarter-century of musical theatre pedagogy and preparation, this Legally Blonde could easily hold its own against other productions of the tremendously entertaining show, whether on tour or even on Broadway.
Julia Nicole Hunter Comes Home to Tennessee, Playing Grace Farrell in ANNIEMarch 27, 2024In the world of theater, there exists a sisterhood of women who can count an appearance as an orphan (maybe even THE orphan) in a production of Annie as either their first onstage role or one of their most vivid onstage performances. But for Murfreesboro native Julia Nicole Hunter, who now stars as Grace Farrell in the national touring company of the seven-time Tony Award-winning musical coming to Tennessee Performing Arts Center this week, her current role as Oliver Warbucks’ faithful assistant marks her first time ever in the show.
Studio Tenn's DRIVING MISS DAISY Beautifully Captures The Spirit of Alfred Uhry's PlayMarch 11, 2024Alfred Uhry is a Southern writer who knows our region better than most and he uses the power of his words and the artistry of his pen to create moments and scenes in plays and musicals that are as authentic as the little rivulets of condensation that snake their way down the outside of a glass of iced tea on a too-hot afternoon in March, for goodness’ sake.
Review Round-up: JAGGED LITTLE PILL, THE 39 STEPS, MRS. KRISHNAN'S PARTY and THE REVOLUTIONISTSMarch 11, 2024In the aftermath of experiencing the Nashville premiere of Jagged Little Pill — the musical inspired by and featuring music from Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album of the same name, other songs written by her and including two created expressly for the production, and featuring a compelling, biting and challenging book by Diablo Cody — one cannot help but lament the show’s abbreviated three-performance run at TPAC’s Andrew Jackson Hall.
The Friday Five (+1): The Cast of Street Theatre Company's THE TRAIL TO OREGONMarch 8, 2024Originally written and produced by Team Starkid (of A Very Potter Musical fame), The Trail to Oregon! parodies the video game The Oregon Trail, which follows a pioneer family on their journey westward to make a new life for themselves. Described as “hilarious and ‘edu-macational’ musical comedy,” the audience chooses the characters’ names at each show and making the decision of which family member succumbs to dysentery on the way to the Pacific Northwest.
Prepare For The Uniquely 'Joyous Fun' of MRS. KRISHNAN'S PARTYMarch 6, 2024Indian Ink Theatre Company’s Justin Lewis promises that Mrs. Krishnan’s Party – which will be celebrated over four days at Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Andrew Johnson Theatre March 6-9 – will lift your spirits and help you feel connected to a community of new friends who may have been actual strangers when you first arrived for the joyous festivities.
IS Productions' Inaugural Staging of Patrick Marber's CLOSER, or Four Brits Behaving BadlyFebruary 21, 2024Just wondering: Do people still engage in cybersex, or has it – like electronic pagers, AOL and video rental stores – gone the way of the dodo? I ask because cybersex provides a salient plot point in Patrick Marber’s 1997 play Closer, which currently is the inaugural production from Nashville’s IS Productions, the more serious, yet less drunken theater producing arm of Inebriated Shakespeare, the entity that’s been serving up the Bard along with a cocktail or two, for the past few years in various Music City (and now in Houston, Texas, if memory serves) locales.