Jeremy Maxwell News

Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical a?" with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin and book by Dennis Kelly a?" plays the historic Franklin Theatre through August 11, with a rollicking production helmed by Sondra Morton, featuring musical direction by Jamey Green and choreography by Everett Tarlton, who score yet another massive hit for the Franklin-based AT Pro (the professional theater arm of Act Too Players, the training program for younger actors that has proven time and again to be an important part of the Middle Tennessee theater community), featuring an all-star cast led by Thomas DeMarcus in the role of the manipulative former British hammer-throwing champion who has turned her attention to running a school for children, variously referred to as a?oenaughtya?? and a?oerevoltinga?? by their headmistress.

2013 First Night Honoree Jamey Green leads the cast of Act Too Pro's production of Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka, opening Tuesday night, October 18, at the historic Franklin Theatre. Running through October 23, Willy Wonka follows the critically acclaimed Act Too Pro debut production of Mary Poppins, which played to capacity crowds in 2015.

Winter's apparently over - it's in the mid-70s, balmy and windy, as we write this - and even before Spring pops up all over, there's an amazing amount of good theater to be found in the Nashville area. In fact, there's so much to choose from that you have absolutely no excuse staying alone in your room. Instead, in the wise and wonderful words of Sally Bowles, life is a cabaret and you're far more likely to find that out in the darkened confines of a theater, where magic and mayhem is bound to happen.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Theater-goers from our neck o' the woods have been quite spoiled already this year - and 2016 is barely three months old - and the hits, as they are wont to say, just keep on coming. In fact, there's so much great theater going on in the Nashville area right now, that you may be having a difficult time choosing among the bounteous offerings local companies are providing you.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Ah, the 1970s - what a decade, am I right? - the perfect time period for theatrical farce, what with its polyester double-knit slacks, soft and silky Nik-Nik shirts, some swell television sitcoms and the rise of entertainment conglomerates to gobble up the so-called 'little guys' in order to allow commercialism to run amok and for the notion of selling out one's soul for personal gratification and financial gain to become part of the American way of life. Let's face it: Isn't all that what has led to and created the current climate of political division and personal derision?

There's so much great theater going on in the Nashville area right now, that you may be having a difficult time choosing among the bounteous offerings local companies are providing you. We're delighted to herald the return of BWW Nashville's Critics Choice with today's feature, offering up a compendium of what's available, what we recommend you see, and - in the cases of show's we've seen already - snippets of our reviews to help you make up your mind!

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Martha Wilkinson directs Brett Cantrell, Audrey Johnson, Jenny Norris-Light, Jeremy Maxwell and Lydia Bushfield in Funny Valentines – the latest offering from Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre – which opened February 11 and continues at the iconic Nashville dinner theater through March 12.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

You can be certain that during this time of year, I'm making my way to various and sundry theaters to witness the latest Christmaslike offerings from companies large and small, but after last season's A Country Christmas, Carol - playwright/actress Lydia Bushfield's uniquely fun take on the Charles Dickens classic about the coldly restrained Ebenezer Scrooge and that whiny little cuss Tiny Tim - her newest show, now onstage at Nashville's Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, seemed mighty promising to kick off my season with raucous laughter and bemused sentiment.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Turkeys are on-sale at your local supermarket, so there's no better way to know Thanksgiving is just around the corner - yep, less than two weeks away! - which means that local theater companies will be unleashing their holiday season productions with enough productions of A Christmas Story (both the musical and the play), It's A Wonderful Life and Ebenezer Scrooge-led shows that you could shake a stick at!

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

It's Halloween weekend and every dramatic personage and theatrical type we've ever encountered is caught up in the annual rush to find just the right costume for their holiday revelries (we confess we've never had the knack for coming up with Halloween get-ups - not since we went in drag to a party at the First Baptist Church as the age of 12…tongues were wagging, we are certain, but we lived to tell about it, so it couldn't have been that bad). In the meantime, there are all sorts of onstage happenings this weekend to keep you otherwise engaged should the difficulty of selecting your costume prove to be too much.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.