Jeffrey Ellis - Page 94

What happens when a group of teenagers idolize a celebrity - a figure from popular culture whose charisma ensures he will live on forever despite his death at a young age - reunite some 20 years later to further venerate their crush and to recall his impact on their young lives? That's the question considered in Ed Graczyk's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, the tragicomedy now onstage as the final production of ACT 1's 2015-16 season at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater.

Eviscerating modern manners and mores with surgical skill and startling focus, playwright Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage is among the most popular contemporary stage comedies of the early 21st century. Now onstage in an altogether agreeable, yet unsettling, production from Nashville's 4th Story Theater at West End United Methodist Church, the play - a searing indictment of pretentiousness and political correctness among the upper crust - remains just as provocative and entertaining as it has always been.

David Compton – one of the region's most accomplished and acclaimed and most beloved actors and directors – died early Wednesday morning, May 4, after a four-year battle with heart disease and cancer. He leaves his wife, Amanda Card Compton (whom he married on Tuesday, May 3, just hours before his death); his mother, Jo Compton of Badin, North Carolina; his sister Becky Compton Taylor; his brother Jim Compton; and countless other friends and family who are mourning his passing.

Hard to believe, but it's been four years since we sat down with Jeremy Benton, whom we've since referred to as Broadway's Best Tap Dancer every chance we've had, and now it seems as that title has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just yesterday, Benton - a native of Springfield, Tennessee - was honored with a nomination for a Fred and Adele Astaire Award in the category for best off-Broadway male dancer, heralding his critically acclaimed role in Cagney, the Musical.

OPEN CALLS in NASHVILLE, TN: Sit Down Production at the Grand Ole Opry House of Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical; Seeking Adults, Male and Female, Ages 18 and up

Hear ye, hear ye…Music City Confidential is back! Which means, of course, that I've heard an awful lot of scuttlebutt since last week's column went live on the interwebs - or, more likely, that I am trying to avoid boring and mundane stuff like packing - I'll let you decide what my motivation truly is...

Will Miranne and Daniel Morgan give top-notch performances, playing Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso in soon-to-be Lipscomb University theater grad Jonah Jackson's production of Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile, now onstage at Brentwood's Towne Centre Theatre through May 7.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Not a word has been touched or added to Dr. Seuss' classic, ensuring anyone who's read the story will find themselves transported into the world they've long remembered and always imagined as Woodbury's Arts Center of Cannon County presents The Cat in the Hat for two Saturdays in May.

Tennessee Women's Theater Project's Tenth Annual Women's Work festival returns to Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theater beginning Friday May 6, featuring performing and visual arts created by women. Running through Sunday May 22, the festival spans a wide variety of styles and genres to offer a completely different program at every performance: poetry and essays; one-woman shows; plays and readings; dance, music, film and a display of visual art works in the theater.

Nashville Ballet and company principal/choreographer Christopher Stuart have been awarded a Fellowship Initiative grant from the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate of New York City Ballet, to support the development of new choreography in a studio setting.

They're dishing up some tasty Rumors at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre - along with the bountiful buffet of Southern delicacies - while at Donelson's The Larry Keeton Theatre, the last two performances of Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest are served up this weekend, and the national touring company of Mamma Mia! winds up its weeklong stand at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall. And the intrepid Nashville Repertory Theatre Professional Interns present their very own production of Gruesome Playground Injuries.

Neil Simon's Rumors - one of the most popular stage farces of the late 20th century - is given its due with the fourth production at Nashville's iconic and I daresay historic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre. Directed with panache by stage veteran Lydia Bushfield (who, herself, has starred in one of the four productions of Rumors at Chaffin's Barn over the past quarter-century), Simon's broadly drawn characters are brought vividly to life by a cast of capable and very funny actors who know how to land a line, deliver a rejoinder and, when called upon, play the straight man to help a fellow actor out when it comes time for him to shine.

Melissa Williams, longtime Nashville theater veteran, directs the final show of ACT 1's 2015-16 season – Ed Graczyk's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean – running at Darkhorse Theater May 6-21.

Make no mistake about it: the current production of Mamma Mia!, the musical theater hit now onstage at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall is just as entertaining, just as over-the-top in all its ABBAesque glory that audiences cannot help but be awestruck by the sheer theatricality of the piece, enthralled by the cavalcade of songs that provide the show's score and delighted by the efforts of the company's talented and eager-to-please and generally eye-poppingly gorgeous ensemble.

At long last, Music City Confidential is back to help you get caught back on the talk of the town - all the news that's fit to print about the Nashville theater community - and to immerse you in the minutiae of life in Theater City (a term we've been trying to copyright since we were in junior high with Thespis, Aristophanes and Martha Wilkinson).

Opening night quickly approaches at Nashville's historic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre - which this year celebrates its 50th season - for Neil Simon's Rumors, first produced on the iconic and completely magical floating stage in 1991.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Nashville Repertory Theatre will launch its 2016-17 season with Jason Robert Brown's contemporary musical The Last Five Years and will feature the regional debut of Doug Wright's Posterity, a play about Henrik Ibsen that was developed in the company's Ingram New Works program and which premiered off-Broadway in 2015.

Since coming to Nashville two years ago, actor/director/teacher Santiago Sosa has found his new theater home to be 'very welcoming and warm' as he's been graciously accepted into the family of artists who make Music City their home. And now, with auditions for Nashville Shakespeare Festival's Apprentice Company on the horizon (April 28 and 29), he's anxious to himself welcome new folks into the ever-growing family of theater types who are bent on improving their skills, expanding their understanding of all things Shakespeare and adding to their own personal bags of theatrical tricks - all while establishing roots in Tennessee.