GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI for April 21, 2017

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! To start your day off on a theatrical note, we ask the musical question: Why does the Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout dislike Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! so freakin' much? While all the other reviewers were writing Valentines to The Divine Miss M on the occasion of her opening night in the sumptuous new Broadway revival of Jerry Herman's hit musical, Teachout offered the lone dissent - it wasn't pretty! Murfreesboro's own Analisa Leaming (who's in the ensemble and understudying Irene Molloy, played by Kate Burton) will be back in her hometown for a concert on Monday night, so maybe she'll have some intel to share...

A big GOOD MORNING shout-out to today's eye-poppingly gorgeous cover models - the beautiful and talented Tosha Pendergrast and her equally dreamy husband Benjamin Pendergrast, who start off their morning by catching up on the latest theatrical dish while listening to the score of Legally Blonde, Tosha's next choreographic assignment for Pull-Tight Players before she heads off to teach dance, among other things, at Christ Presbyterian Academy.

Playwright Tori Keenan-Zelt (a past Ingram New Works playwright) takes over the @BWW_Nashville Twitter today to show us a "Playwright's Day in Nashville," including the first rehearsal for the upcoming workshop of her new play Seph, directed by Jessika Malone, hobnobbing with this year's crop of Ingram New Works writers and capping off her evening at the performance of The Amish Project, the latest, scintillating collaboration between Actors Bridge Ensemble and Belmont University Theatre! Don't miss out on Tori's Music City Adventure!

What's happening this weekend on stages around our neck o' the woods? Well, Riverdance plays a weekend stand at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall, celebrating its 20th (yep, that's right, 20th) anniversary. You're clamoring to know what that really means by the numbers, right (I mean, seriously, who isn't?)...well, it means 2,000 Irish Dancers; 0,000 dance shoes used; 15,000 costumes worn; 400,000 gallons of water consumed; 75,000 gallons of Gatorade consumed; 2,000,000 show programs sold; 1,750 flight cases used; 14,000 stage lighting bulbs used; 6,000,000 pounds of dry ice used onstage; and 70,000 pounds of chocolate consumed (for energy!) by the cast! We suddenly don't feel so bad about our daily chocolate intake!

SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY: MONSTER TRUCK RALLY...oops, got carried away there: Join Nashville Shakespeare Festival for their annual celebration of the Bard's Birthday and the Biggest Balcony Scene Ever! THIS SUNDAY, APRIL 23, from noon to 2 p.m. at Lipscomb University Flatt Amphitheater. The traditional celebration of the Bard's Birthday Bash includes the "biggest balcony scene ever!" All are invited to join the Nashville Shakespeare Festival to play either Romeo or Juliet and read aloud from the famous balcony scene. The celebration will feature snacks and live entertainment.

What to wear? Costumes or play clothes!

Siblings (and Belmont University Musical Theatre grads) Mathew deGuzman and Lissa deGuzman (who is a former First Night Most Promising Actor), are now on tour with Aladdin the Musical, performing as swings in the show - how's sweet is that? The fact they are both insanely talented is just the cherry on the cake of the whole flying carpet kind of thing!

Up in Crossville, audiences at Cumberland County Playhouse this weekend have a choice of two shows from which to choose: tonight's the closing for our pal Lori Fischer's Greener Pastures closes out its run on the Mainstage and in the Adventure Theatre, A Second Helping (the sequel to Church Basement Ladies) has two shows on Saturday. Opening next week (Friday, April 28) is The Playhouse's rendition of Million Dollar Quartet, starring Daniel W. Black and Britt Hancock among others, which promises to rock the box office through June 9.

What does the future hold for some of the area's leading theater companies, as we gaze into our crystal balls (eyes up here, y'all), we are able to divine some details: Nashville Rep hasn't yet formally announced their 2017-18 season, but smart cookies can find out the shows on their schedule if they're privy to ticket info for Broadway at TPAC's upcoming series...which means you already know that Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, Sense and Sensibility, Inherit the Wind (read downward and learn something historic about that particular show), David Lindsay Abaire's Good People (or Lydia Diamond's Smart People...it's some show about people talking to one another with fire and ice) and A Christmas Story (what would a holiday season in Music City be without it?) are on the schedule. The Larry Keeton Theatre announced its upcoming 17-18 slate of shows during last night's opening for Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got the Will?; it opens with Big River, followed by Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific (a guy we know will direct that, but he's the shy and retiring type and requests we fail to mention he is us), White Christmas, West Side Story in Concert (?), 9 to 5 The Musical and Annie, the chestnut about orphans and bald millionaires who hanker for a son.

In theater history, today's the day we get to celebrate Patti LuPone (which we do every day, naturally) on the occasion of her 68th birthday. We love her, adore her and venerate her (who gives a shit what Terry Teachout thinks!)...the aforementioned Inherit the Wind (based on the famed Scopes "monkey" trial of Dayton, Tennessee, infamy - boy howdy, but do we have stories about a night spent in Dayton while working on a state senate campaign back before the turn of the century) bowed on Broadway in 1955; Annie (starring Andrea McArdle, late of Search for Tomorrow) opened in 1977; and in 2015, Doctor Zhivago (think of the Russian Revolution with more jazz hands) opened, closing after a mere 23 performances; Duncan Sheik's latest, American Psycho (starring our favorite Benjamin Walker of Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson fame, along with Nashville's own, the Tony Award-winning Alice Ripley) debuted in 2016, racking up only 54 performances despite a hefty haul of nominations during awards season.

That's it for this week: We'll be back Monday morning if we survive the 16 bachelorettes staying at our AirBnB over the weekend.