Jordan Ravellette News

Boiler Room Theatre debuts its most eagerly anticipated production of the 2012 season next week with Next To Normal, the groundbreaking 2009 Tony Award-winning musical, starring Nashville stage favorite Megan Murphy Chambers as Diana, a suburban wife and mother who contends with her worsening bipolar disorder while her family struggles to take care of one another.

The Boiler Room Theatre (BRT), Williamson County's original and longest-running professional theatre company, will next present Next to Normal. This, the third offering of the BRT's 12th Season, opens May 25th and runs through June 16th at the theatre's iconic namesake venue in the historic Factory at Franklin, 230 Franklin Rd., Building Six, in Franklin, Tenn. for a run through May 5.

Will Butler is pretty jazzed up about playing Eugene Morris Jerome in Circle Players' upcoming production of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs which might be due, in part, to the fact that he's pretty certain he's got all the lines down pat. But the real reason he's excited is that Brighton Beach marks his return-it's kind of a comeback for the young actor-to the Nashville stage since his "senior capstone project" at Belmont University in 2010.

Directed with care and attention to detail by Johnny Peppers, who is quickly becoming the go-to guy for Simon shows in Nashville (just prior to the opening of Circle's Brighton Beach Memoirs, his production of Barefoot in the Park for Franklin's Pull-Tight Players closed), the play features young Will Butler as the play's nominal lead-and stand-in for Simon himself, upon whose life the richly drawn characters and situations are derived-Eugene Morris Jerome, a 15-year-old Polish American Jewish boy living in Brooklyn with his parents, his brother, his aunt and her two daughters.

Will Butler is pretty jazzed up about playing Eugene Morris Jerome in Circle Players' upcoming production of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs which might be due, in part, to the fact that he's pretty certain he's got all the lines down pat. But the real reason he's excited is that Brighton Beach marks his return-it's kind of a comeback for the young actor-to the Nashville stage since his "senior capstone project" at Belmont University in 2010.

Will Butler is pretty jazzed up about playing Eugene Morris Jerome in Circle Players' upcoming production of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs which might be due, in part, to the fact that he's pretty certain he's got all the lines down pat. But the real reason he's excited is that Brighton Beach marks his return-it's kind of a comeback for the young actor-to the Nashville stage since his "senior capstone project" at Belmont University in 2010.

Directed with a palpable sense of style and tongue-in-cheek respect for the musical's unique cast of characters by Brandy Austin, with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Boiler Room Theatre delivers yet another musical theater classic to the stage, reaffirming the company's dominance in that particular theatrical genre. You have a musical you want to see onstage? Tell the BRT folks and they'll deliver the kind of production you have dreamed about and longed for - and they'll do it with a cast of local performers who are guaranteed to knock your socks off! And with music direction by Jamey Green and choreography by Lauri Gregoire, both of whom are BRT resident artists, you'll be assured of a huge hit.

The Boiler Room Theatre (BRT), Williamson County's original and longest-running professional theatre company, continues its 11th season with the recent Tony Award-winning Broadway musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee opening August 12

The Boiler Room Theatre (BRT), Williamson County's original and longest-running professional theatre company, continues its 11th season with the recent Tony Award-winning Broadway musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee opening August 12

There is so much energy, enthusiasm and heart found in Street Theatre Company's Hairspray that it's certain to keep your spirits buoyed for a long time after leaving the theater. Brought to the stage by a competent creative team and a huge cast of committed performers, the Scott Wittman-Marc Shaiman musical - featuring a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan based on John Waters' wholly original film - Hairspray is great big fun, featuring some lovable characters and one of the most infectious musical theatre scores around.