Jeffrey Ellis - Page 6

When Lin-Manuel Miranda’s epic masterpiece Hamilton was last in residence at Nashville’s Tennessee Performing Arts Center – where it is now ensconced for an as equally anticipated, if briefer, two-week run through August 7 – the world was a far different place than that in which we live today. Yet somehow, due in very large part to the Covid-19 pandemic, the January 6th insurrection at our nation’s Capitol, and the repercussions and reverberations of those two cataclysmic events that have followed in the intervening two-and-a-half years, Hamilton seems to be more resonant, its story more relevant and its presentation more heartrending and current than ever before.

Stunning. Powerful. Deeply moving. The words come rather easily in an attempt to adequately describe the awe-inspiring performances to be found in director Matt Logan’s beautifully crafted production of A.S. Peterson’s The Hiding Place. Now onstage in its Nashville premiere at the Soli Deo Center (which, to be frank, is equally notable and worthy of excessive praise) at Christ Presbyterian Academy through July 23, the play – which had its premiere in September 2019 at A.D. Players in Houston, Texas – proves to be both accessible, engaging and, we daresay, hopeful even as it tells a story from one of the darkest eras in human history.

In theater, as in life, it’s all in the timing: Bucket List Productions’ Assassins: The Musical opened its Nashville run at Darkhorse Theater on Friday, July 8, the same day that former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe died by an assassin’s gun. As news of Abe’s assassination reverberated throughout the world yesterday, it underscored the timelessness and the unfortunate relevance of the Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical outside the oftentimes fanciful, yet eerily prescient, world of musical theater.

Broadway legend and Tony Award winner Donna McKechnie will be presented with Nashville Repertory Theatre’s Ovation Award during the company’s upcoming annual fundraiser Broadway Brunch, set for August 21, at the Wildhorse Saloon.

Thanks to the successful and continuing partnership of Studio Tenn and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, Sam Harris returns to Nashville this Saturday night for an evening of Cabaret On Stage, the kick-off of the second season of such offerings on the stage of TPAC’s Andrew Jackson Hall.

Leave it to Ernie Nolan and his creative gang at Nashville Children’s Theatre to take audiences on a much-appreciated holiday under the sea with their riotous, rollicking and altogether joyful production of The Spongebob Musical – featuring some of Nashville’s most beloved stage performers – now onstage through July 17.

First conceived prior to the global Covid 19 pandemic and nurtured through those dark and challenging times by Gimlin and Breen, the two halves of THAT WOMAN have finally debuted at Nashville’s Darkhorse Theatre this week and will continue there and at The East Room in East Nashville through June 29, affording audiences throughout the city an opportunity to see this unique collection of original works of art close to home.

That Woman - The Dance Show is produced by Tennessee Playwrights Studio and directed by Molly Breen. This production has been co-created with the following Nashville choreographers: Molly Breen, Caitlin Del Casino, Brandon Johnson, Thea Jones, Cornell Kennedy, Jodie Mowrey (Director of Choreography), Schuyler Phoenix, Rachel Simons, Brittany Stewart, and Emma Williams. 

A jukebox musical featuring songs from a plethora of country music artists, May We All has all the charm of a pedal-tavern powered by a dozen drunk “woo-woo” girls debauching themselves all the way down Broadway, while displaying all the emotional complexity and dramatic intensity of a rejected script from a Hallmark Network Christmas movie.

Opening tonight at Darkhorse Theater in Nashville is That Woman – The Monologue Show, which explores the stories of women who involved or rumored-to-be involved with President John F. Kennedy. Co-written by Nashville-area women playwrights and actors, it is performed by a diverse ensemble of actors who bring the women to life “in a fascinating look at a lesser-known aspect of history and a thought-provoking and entertaining evening of theatre.”

The story of Cinderella and her Prince is as aspirational and as inspirational as any to be found in the history of musical theater and we are once again delighted to tell you, gentle readers, that the current iteration of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella now onstage at Crossville’s Cumberland County Playhouse is as thoroughly satisfying and spellbinding as any we have ever seen.

With its fresh new take on the beloved tale of a young woman who is transformed from a chambermaid into a princess, the hilarious and romantic Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella combines the story's classic elements – the glass slippers, the pumpkin, and the prince’s ball – along with some surprising twists.

Now onstage through June 18 at Clarksville’s Roxy Regional Theatre, Cry-Baby: The Musical (which played a brief 2008 Broadway run) is a riff on Romeo and Juliet that takes place during the age of polio vaccinations, Pinko Commie malcontents and the overzealous construction of flimsy, at-home shelters that promised protection from atomic blasts and somehow typified the Eisenhower era of the post-war 1950s.

Set in 1950s Baltimore, the conservative squares face off against the leather-clad delinquents in this rockabilly musical from the creative team behind Hairspray – Thomas Meehan and Mark O'Donnell – featuring a score from Fountains of Wayne co-founder Adam Schlesinger and The Daily Show executive producer David Javerbaum.  

Sam is holding on to the past. He’s had the same job, lived in the same house, even ordered the same coffee for a decade now. This one weekend could change all of that. Come see the world premiere of Ten Year – a new musical by Wesley King and Jacob Henz, running through June 4 at Nashville’s Darkhorse Theater.

Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot, the 1960 musical based on the legend of King Arthur and his knights of the round table and adapted from the T.H. White novel The Once and Future King, is now onstage in Franklin, in an entertaining, sparkling and winningly fast-paced rendition from Studio Tenn. Under the direction of Broadway veteran Phillip William McKinley (The Boy From Oz, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark) who, with his creative team, brings to life the show’s 2010 update by multiple Emmy Award-winning, multi-hyphenate television producer David Lee (Frasier, Wings, The Jeffersons).

Yet perhaps at no time during its vaunted and venerated history has Oklahoma! been so polarizing as it has become now, thanks to the 2019 Broadway revival directed by Daniel Fish which is touring the provinces. Read our critic's review.

Single tickets go on sale on Thursday, May 5, at 10 a.m. at TPAC.org and in person at the TPAC Box Office, 505 Deaderick St., in downtown Nashville. For groups of 10 or more, call 615-782-4060. Patrons are encouraged to have tickets delivered to TPAC Concierge App when possible.

After more than two years since its original opening night was set in 2020, Nashville Repertory Theatre’s eagerly anticipated production of Disney’s Mary Poppins – the stage musicalization of P.L. Travers’ tales of the acerbic British nanny and her oft-misbehaving charges – has finally landed on the stage of the James K. Polk Theatre at Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Contemporary arts center OZ Arts Nashville today announced the line-up for its inaugural Brave New Works Lab, which transforms the organization’s expansive warehouse into a laboratory for local artists to experiment with new forms as they create new works for the stage. The program features four unique performance pieces from local artists working across multiple disciplines, including dance, theater, multimedia, performance art, and music. Performances will be held nightly from May 19-21, and OZ Arts will also host a cutting-edge visual art exhibit and poetic film screenings presented with local partner organizations in conjunction with the Brave New Works Lab.