Jeffrey Ellis - Page 140

Donelson's Larry Keeton Theatre will present the turn-of-the-century classic Meet Me in St. Louis, November 5-21, directed and choreographed by Kate Adams-Johnson, with music direction by Ginger Newman. The show, based on the beloved 1944 MGM movie, contains many of the popular songs from its film counterpart including 'The Trolley Song', 'The Boy Next Door', 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' and 'Meet Me In St. Louis.'

Casting is complete for the world premiere of An American Country Christmas Carol, a new musical that will be presented in a staged reading at Franklin's Boiler Room Theatre on December 5, 6 and 12 at 8 p.m. Heading the cast as Ebenezer Scrugg is Larry Tobias, whose selected credits include the national tour of Stand By Your Man and numerous productions of Ring of Fire. In Nashville he has been seen as Pap in Tennessee Rep's Big River and in Studio Tenn's Our Town.

There's no doubt about it: Circle Players' Tim Larson is fearless. Perhaps no director in Nashville is more ambitious than Larson who, time after time, takes on the seemingly impossible and reimagines it as something well within the reach of his creative collective of actors, designers, technicians and musicians. Larson's staging of Titanic, a project he's taken on twice to great and justifiable acclaim, proves that even that musical is something which seasoned and capable community theater groups can tackle.

Now, in a sumptuously mounted revival touring the country, director/choreographer Robert Longbottom - who made his Broadway debut with Side Show, a musical of similar themes (again with music by Henry Krieger) that had the same visceral impact on me - has re-fashioned Dreamgirls for the new millennium, while remaining faithful to the original material. The result is musical theater at its best, telling a universal tale filled with onstage spectacle and backstage drama that is as stunning and as moving as the Broadway original.

With an imaginative staging and details-oriented direction by Matt Logan, with the superb musical direction of Nathan Burbank and the spirited choreography of Ashley Anderson McCarthy (who does double duty as 'Minnie Fay' in the cast - and has never looked lovelier onstage), Studio Tenn's first official season kicks off in high style with this charming production that is as colorful and heartwarming as any we've seen.

If you've a hankering for some wickedly good fun this Halloween season, you need look no further than Street Theatre Company's wonderfully staged Macabaret, a musical send-up of all things ghostly, that features a terrific cast under the direction of one of Nashville's most beloved director/choreographers. Even if you're not a big fan of Halloween, you must at least make the trip to Street Theatre Company's new performance space to revel in the spectacle heretofore known as the lovely and talented Megan Murphy Chambers.

Clearly, Bud, Not Buddy is a promising opening to NCT's 2010-11 season and it sets the bar high for what is to follow in the coming year. It is a superbly acted production, featuring a number of Nashville actors making notable NCT debuts, and it is augmented by the tremendous design capabilities of NCT's imaginative artisans.

Following the reversal of their convictions and their release from prison, six Death Row inmates tell their harrowing stories in their own words in the drama, The Exonerated by Jessica Blank and Erik Jenson. The play will be performed at Nashville's Christ Church Cathedral's Cheek Hall in six performances October 7-9 and 14-16 as the kick-off to the seventh season of the Sacred Space for the City Arts Series.

One of the best things about living in Nashville - known throughout the world as Music City USA - is that even when you're mounting a high school production, you have the opportunity to draw inspiration from the wealth of talent found in the city. That certainly was the case this week when Daron Bruce, director of theater at Hume-Fogg Academic High School welcomed country music superstar and Broadway veteran Gary Morris to conduct a workshop for the cast his upcoming production of Les Miserables.

Opening just in time for the Halloween season, Circle Players continues its 2010-11 season with a production of Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse's rarely performed musical thriller Jekyll and Hyde, running October 15-31 at Donelson's Keeton Theatre. Jekyll and Hyde is described as 'an evocative tale of the epic battle between good and evil,' based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic story about a brilliant doctor whose experiments with human personality create a murderous counterpart.

Director Maryanna Clarke's intelligent choice to retain the play's original setting instead of transplanting the playwrights' characters to some American hamlet helps to underscore the play's universality and to further illustrate how women all over the world must confront the cold reality of a cancer diagnosis. With the tremendous guidance of dialect coach Jill Massie, the three actresses in the piece (Corrie Miller, Kristin James and Linda Sue Simmons) display a remarkable gift of actually sounding as if they come from the Emerald Isle, instead of sounding like a bunch of Tennessee actresses mimicking the Lucky Charms leprechaun.

Jennifer Richmond, Dietz Osborne, Ben Dawson, Debbie Kraski and Charlie Winton star in Squabbles, the next show opening at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre in Nashville on Thursday, October 14. In Squabbles, Jerry Sloan is a successful jingle writer of commercial jingles married to an equally successful lawyer. Living with the happy couple is Jerry's not so happy father-in-law, Abe. When Jerry's mother Mildred is also forced to move in, the fur flies between Abe and Mildred in a succession of confrontations.

Opening just in time for the Halloween season, Circle Players continues its 2010-11 season with a production of Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse's rarely performed musical thriller Jekyll and Hyde, running October 15-31 at Donelson's Keeton Theatre. Jekyll and Hyde is described as 'an evocative tale of the epic battle between good and evil,' based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic story about a brilliant doctor whose experiments with human personality create a murderous counterpart.

Jennifer Richmond, Dietz Osborne, Ben Dawson, Debbie Kraski and Charlie Winton star in Squabbles, the next show opening at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre in Nashville on Thursday, October 14. In Squabbles, Jerry Sloan is a successful jingle writer of commercial jingles married to an equally successful lawyer. Living with the happy couple is Jerry's not so happy father-in-law, Abe. When Jerry's mother Mildred is also forced to move in, the fur flies between Abe and Mildred in a succession of confrontations.

DTT artistic director Christopher Mohnani offers his adaptation of Carmen based on the famous opera of the same title. In Mohnani's adaptation, Seville's vibrant beauty serves as the background for this tragic story of a fiery gypsy girl whose seduction of a naïve officer leads to rejection, jealousy and ultimately death.

With a trio of powerful leading performances from Ben Van Diepen, Ciaran McCarthy and Laura Matula, the Boiler Room Theatre production of Jonathan Larson's Pultizer Prize-winning Rent may well be the finest interpretation of the groundbreaking musical we've ever seen. Certainly, we've never seen a more passionate or more engaging mounting of Rent and the cast assembled by director Corbin Green deserve every accolade possible for the obviously heartfelt rendering they give Larson's work.

Nashville theater audiences owe a huge debt of gratitude to Tennessee Repertory Theatre's creative team - led by producing artistic director Rene Dunshee Copeland, scenic and properties designer Gary Hoff, costume designer Trish Clark, lighting designer Phillip Franck and technical director Tyler Axt - for the exceptional production of To Kill A Mockingbird, now onstage at TPAC's Andrew Johnson Theatre, extended through October 30.

Following the reversal of their convictions and their release from prison, six Death Row inmates tell their harrowing stories in their own words in the drama, The Exonerated by Jessica Blank and Erik Jenson. The play will be performed at Nashville's Christ Church Cathedral's Cheek Hall in six performances October 7-9 and 14-16 as the kick-off to the seventh season of the Sacred Space for the City Arts Series.

The play is described as 'a tender, often hilarious exploration of the lives of three women: 34 year-old hairdresser Rose lives on a farm with her husband and two children, wondering if she married too young. Lola, in her 50s, has withdrawn from the world. Nobody ever visits, unopened mail piles up, and she's trying to face the job of selling, packing and moving on. Lyndsey, at 11, is worried that her best friend has stopped sitting beside her in art class. When breast cancer intrudes, everything begins to come undone.'

Boiler Room Theatre, in the historic Factory at Franklin, opens its production of Jonathan Larson's Rent on Friday night, October 1, preceded by a gala celebration at South Gate Studios from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.