Kate Adams-Johnson News

Directed by Kate Adams-Johnson, with music direction by Ginger Newman, the show features a cast of 18, a live band, more than 30 dance numbers and vocal performances that feature some of the Swing era's greatest hits, including 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' and 'It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got That Swing)'.

Directed by Kate Adams-Johnson, with music direction by Ginger Newman, the show features a cast of 18, a live band, more than 30 dance numbers and vocal performances that feature some of the Swing era's greatest hits, including 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' and 'It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got That Swing)'.

Directed by Kate Adams-Johnson, with music direction by Ginger Newman, the show features a cast of 18, a live band, more than 30 dance numbers and vocal performances that feature some of the Swing era's greatest hits, including 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' and 'It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got That Swing)'.

Directed by Kate Adams-Johnson, with music direction by Ginger Newman, the show features a cast of 18, a live band, more than 30 dance numbers and vocal performances that feature some of the Swing era's greatest hits, including 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' and 'It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got That Swing)'.

With the strains of 'Auld Lang Syne' mere moments away, minds are apt to be caught up in reflection, remembering the year now ending as a new one awaits just over the horizon. Certainly that's what I've been doing lately, looking back over the past year in Nashville theatre as I pencil in dates in my new 2010 (Here's a question to ponder: Is it 'two thousand ten' or 'twenty ten'...think about it and get back to me) calendar for the shows set to open in the months ahead.

Mame begins in the roaring '20s, when Mame Dennis is rolling in the dough and leads the life of an eccentric, Bohemian socialite. Things change when she is appointed guardian to her 10-year-old nephew Patrick. When the Great Depression hits, Mame becomes virtually penniless overnight - trying to make ends meet at any number of odd jobs, including one as a retail sales clerk, quite often failing but refusing to allow the times to dictate her mood or dampen her spirits.

David Williams and Cat Eberwine give such winning performances as Seymour and Audrey in the Senior Center for the Arts' production of Little Shop of Horrors, now onstage at Nashville Dinner Theatre through November 15, that it's easy to overlook some of the production's other, more obvious, shortcomings. Williams and Eberwine are sublimely off-kilter as the oddest of couples in the Alan Menken-Howard Ashman musical, with an onstage chemistry that makes them completely believable and altogether lovable in their cartoonish roles.

David Williams and Cat Eberwine give such winning performances as Seymour and Audrey in the Senior Center for the Arts' production of Little Shop of Horrors, now onstage at Nashville Dinner Theatre through November 15, that it's easy to overlook some of the production's other, more obvious, shortcomings. Williams and Eberwine are sublimely off-kilter as the oddest of couples in the Alan Menken-Howard Ashman musical, with an onstage chemistry that makes them completely believable and altogether lovable in their cartoonish roles.

One of the most memorable shows in musical theatre history, Annie Get Your Gun is Irving Berlin's masterpiece, including some of the best songs ever written for the stage; unfortunately, it also has one of the creakiest books ever written to accompany those wonderful tunes. Although that script was updated and re-tooled for the 1999 Broadway revival, SCA decided to go with the older (probably from the 1966 revival), lamer and (we hate to say it) more racist version. It was not a good choice, particularly when the 1999 revival script is available; its judicious editing resulted in a tighter script and a quicker pace to make the show more palatable to contemporary audiences-especially in 2009.

If you ever needed any evidence that musical theatre is alive and well in Music City USA, you need look no further than Nashville Dinner Theatre's production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, which this weekend wraps up its run at the Senior Center for the Arts. It is superbly acted, beautifully sung and confidently staged. It remains a compelling piece of theatre, as moving as any I've ever seen.

Perhaps the most remarkable element of Circle Players' Fame, the Musical is its talented cast--an amazing amalgam of age-appropriate actors assaying the roles in this now-iconic tale of the last four years of New York's High School of Performing Arts. Credit director Tim Larson's casting abilities for this feat which, combined with strong production values, inventive staging and laudable choreography by Kate Adams-Johnson, makes the show an excellent choice to open Circle's 60th anniversary season.

July continues to be a busy month for Nashville-area theatre companies as five new productions are slated to open by week's end, including the world premiere of a new musical, the Nashville premiere of a new comedy by Sarah Ruhl and a production of Fame, the Musical, from Middle Tennessee's oldest community theatre organization.