Jeffrey Ellis - Page 30

Even on its third stand at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall, The Book of Mormon - that irreverent yet heartfelt musical from Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone - remains just as profound and profane as you remember. And it's still so thoroughly delightful and awesomely entertaining that you might even feel as if you're seeing it for the first time.

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird has been much in the news of late, what with a brand spanking new Broadway production (written by Aaron Sorkin and which opened this past December) and reports of dozens of productions around the world of the stage adaptation written by Christopher Sergel being shuttered due to threats of legal action from Scott Rudin, producer of the new Broadway version, and attorneys for the Harper Lee estate.

Sweat - Lynn Nottage's 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning play - is one of the most trenchant and evocative contemporary dramas to come down the theatrical turnpike since the advent of the so-called Trump Era and, as presented by Humanity Theatre Project (in its first-ever full production of its two years of existence), is one of the most compelling plays to be presented in recent memory. Focusing on the down-at-heels habitues of a working class neighborhood tavern in Reading, Pennsylvania at the turn of this century, the story told by the brilliant and prolific Ms. Nottage is universal, its topicality as potent today as it was when the play first debuted at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015.

By turns wonderfully funny and achingly poignant, Every Brilliant Thing - Tennessee Women's Theater Project's mounting of Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahue's one-actor play about dealing with the suicide of one's mother - offers Nashville audiences a unique method by which to examine the effects of depression and surviving the loss of a loved one. Starring notable local actor Becky Wahlstrom, what ensues is not quite a monologue, nor is it (for all intents and purposes) a one-woman show (or what one expects from such an offering) due to its clever and imaginative structure that ensures every audience member becomes intimately involved in what transpires in a scant one-hour of stage time.

Michael Frayn's Noises Off, considered by many as the greatest farce ever written, opens Friday, March 8, at Cumberland County Playhouse, featuring a cast of CCP favorites bringing all the onstage/offstage/backstage hilarity to life in Crossville.

Santiago Sosa directs the eagerly anticipated Theater Bug production of Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, opening March 23 and running through March 30.

Nashville Children's Theatre (NCT) this week revealed its 2019-20 season replete with rock and roll, history, holiday magic, current events, interactivity, musicals, classics and more. NCT, the nation's oldest professional theatre for young audiences and the largest theatre in Tennessee will perform seven shows during its 2019-20 season, including both world and regional premieres.

Actors Bridge Ensemble presents the Nashville premiere of Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, adapted for the stage by Stephen Sachs and directed by Jon Royal, March 22-31, at the Actors Bridge Studio at Darkhorse Chapel.

A drug addicted abuse victim and a war veteran with severe PTSD in a seedy Oklahoma hotel doesn't sound like an ideal set of circumstances, but it makes for a fascinating study in humanity from playwright Tracy Letts in Bug, the next production from Way Off Broadway Productions.

The return of the iconic Shakespearean tragedy Romeo & Juliet, as well as Nashville premieres of Christopher Bruce's Rolling Stones-inspired ballet Rooster and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's A Streetcar Named Desire are among the highlights of Nashville Ballet's 2019-20 season, announced today.

Jennifer Turner, currently executive vice president and managing director at Southern California's Segerstrom Center for the Arts, has been named as the next president and chief executive officer at Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center starting May 2019.

Some two years after its presence in the theater community was made know during One Night of Empathy, which brought together 14 separate theater companies, Nashville-based Humanity Theatre Project debuts its first full production March 8-16 with Lynn Nottage's Sweat at Darkhorse Theater.

Crafting a musical theater hit is a lot like alchemy - the ancient study focused primarily on creating gold from baser elements - and oftentimes no matter the ingredients, directors never quite achieve the outcome for which they strive. But in the case of director/choreographer Everett Tarlton's production of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate (now onstage at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre through March 7), he has crafted something so special that it essentially defines the theatrical gold standard.

No doubt about it, A Bronx Tale - the musical version of Chazz Palminteri's original 1989 one man show (he played some 18 characters in the original work) that ultimately led to a 1993 film directed by Robert DeNiro - is one engaging night of theater, telling an intriguing story of a boy who grows to manhood on the mean streets of The Bronx, in the shadow of local wiseguy/mob kingpin Sonny, played here by Joe Barbara with chilling authenticity and palpable, if oily, charm.

It's a homecoming of sorts for Joey Barreiro this week as he and his castmates from the national tour of A Bronx Tale - the Broadway musical that's based on a one-man show created by actor/writer Chazz Palminteri - encamp at Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center for a week-long stand.

KST Studio of Voice - the creative brainchild of acclaimed concert, opera and musical theater soprano Katherine Sandoval Taylor - will host its annual Winter Showcase this Saturday night, February 9, at 7 p.m. at Washington Theatre at Murfreesboro's Patterson Park.

What better way to spend a Saturday night - or any other night of the week, for that matter - than at Abigail's Party, the latest theatrical offering from Verge Theater Company? Featuring a wonderfully engaging ensemble of actors, Abigail's Party is now onstage through February 17 at The Barbershop Theater.

For Darya, a 42-year-old Polish emigre eking out a meager and bleak existence in New Jersey, life in America seems far less promising than she may have considered at the outset of her journey. But in Martyna Majok's exquisitely crafted and beautifully written play - Ironbound - which ends its all-too-brief Nashville run tonight, there is a glimmer (a very faint one, truth be told, but a glimmer nonetheless) of hope that may augur a brighter future ahead.

In recent years, Center for the Arts has certainly upped the ante with musical productions which have, consistently, been better than the one before, raising the bar for all the shows still to come. Case in point: Disney's Newsies, which closed its sold-out run in Murfreesboro on Sunday.

During the very first scenes of Ghost - the world premiere of the play by Idris Goodwin, based upon the 2016 book of the same name by Jason Reynolds, now onstage at Nashville Children's Theatre through February 3 - the audience becomes caught up in the emotional turmoil experienced by young Castle Cranshaw and his mom, Terri. As their world is upended by events taking place onstage, the story of Ghost is set in motion, hurtling toward a moment in which lives are changed and the future opens up in ways both unexpected and completely authentic.