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BWW Review: Country Comic Legend Minnie Pearl Comes to Life at Chaffin's Barn
Country comedy legend Minnie Pearl is brought to life thanks to Minnie Pearl: All The News From Grinder's Switch, a musical comedy revue making its debut this weekend at Nashville's Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre in a very limited, four performance engagement through September 13. Directed with obvio...
BWW Review: Nashville Shakespeare Festival's Magical MIDSUMMER Heralds a 30th Anniversary
In her welcoming note to audiences at the 2018 version of Nashville Shakespeare Festival's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream - the 30th anniversary of the company's annual Shakespeare in the Park festivities at Centennial Park (which now is without question the place to be on a midsummer's nig...
BWW Review: Studio Tenn's New FRANKENSTEIN Is Mesmerizing and Startling
Remaining faithful to the original story conceived and written by Mary Shelley, Studio Tenn takes its audiences on an epic gothic - and highly theatrical - journey with Frankenstein, newly adapted by playwright A.S. Peterson and onstage at Jamison Theater through September 9. Mesmerizing and startli...
BWW Review: Way Off Broadway Productions' Chilling and Stunning UNIDENTIFIED HUMAN REMAINS...
On first consideration, Brad Fraser's 1989 play Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love is a darkly comical look at a group of disaffected young Canadians hurtling toward their 30s with no real sense of purpose or identity guiding them on their way. But if you look more closely - even...
BWW Review: Stellar Performances Highlight Street Theatre Company's THE BURNT PART BOYS
Stellar performances from a superb ensemble cast have come to exemplify productions from Nashville's Street Theatre Company and, make no mistake about it, the company's latest musical - The Burnt Part Boys, with book by Mariana Elder, music by Chris Miller and lyrics by Nathan Tysen - delivers that ...
BWW Review: Leaving STEEL MAGNOLIAS' Chinquapin on a Very High Note at The Keeton
My heart is full for many reasons, not the least of which is that I can say, henceforth, that the last production of Steel Magnolias that I reviewed - this one at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson through Saturday, September 1 - was almost as good as that very first production I saw in Chicago in...
BWW Review: Arts Center of Cannon County's Stunning and Sumptuous TITANIC Sets Sail in Woodbury
Now onstage through August 25 at Woodbury's Arts Center of Cannon County, in a sumptuously mounted production helmed by director Kim Powers, with producer Brittany Goodwin, musical direction by Allison Hall and choreography by Julie Wilcox, Titanic takes its audience on an intriguing, emotional jour...
BWW Review: NEWSIES Makes Headlines for Start of Circle Players' 69th Season
High-spirited, energetic and enormously entertaining, Circle Players' Newsies is a certified hit - thanks in large part to the focused direction of Jim Manning, the athletic and challenging choreography of Tosha Pendergrast and the superb musical direction of DaJuana Hammonds - performed by an impre...
BWW Review: CFTA Sells All The Tickets for Harling's STEEL MAGNOLIAS
There's probably no title in the contemporary theater repertoire guaranteed to spark more debate than Robert Harling's Steel Magnolias. Particularly among southern companies, Harling's story of six women who gather every Saturday morning in a small-town Louisiana beauty shop has legions of fans who ...
BWW Review: Metzler's CRY IT OUT Engagingly Traverses the Many Challenges of Motherhood
Sharply written dialogue and an engaging story as relevant as any you are likely to see onstage nowadays are the hallmarks of Molly Smith Metzler's Cry It Out, now onstage through August 18 at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater in a superbly acted production from SistaStyle Productions and Three in a Tre...
BWW Review: Chaffin's Barn Re-opens With Habit-Forming SISTER ACT
Nashville's iconic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre is back and better than ever! After some six months - and 50 or more years since its debut - the newly renovated and gorgeously appointed Chaffin's Barn has reopened with a rousing production of Sister Act, the habit-forming musical that played to sol...
BWW Review: Arts Center of Cannon County's GREASE is Fun, But Out of Step With The Times
It's fun, perhaps even joyful, and audiences are clearly delighted to reward director Matthew Hayes Hunter's youthful cast with riotous applause at the appropriate moments, but do they really endorse the message of the timeworn Jacobs and Casey script? Heck, do they even think about it?...
BWW Review: Adam Szymkowicz's MARIAN, OR THE TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD is Truly Legendary
The legend of Robin Hood is subject to personal interpretation and, given the times in which we now live, it only makes sense that playwright Adam Szymkowicz would devise his own treatment of the legend in ways both provocative and traditional. In Marian, Or The True Tale of Robin Hood, Szymkowicz p...
BWW Review: Keenan-Zelt's TRUTH/DARE Gives Four Young Actors A Chance to Shine
Playwright Tori Keenan-Zelt's emergence as a force in contemporary theater seems assured with her newest play, Truth/Dare, an incisive, on-target treatment of the pitfalls of adolescence and the frailty of relationships during a time in which everything seems in a constant state of flux. Directed by...
BWW Review: LOVE NEVER DIES Closes Out TPAC's 2017-18 Season
We cannot help but wonder: Do peacock feathers foretell of something far more sinister and portentous than what we've seen already in both Love Never Dies and The Phantom of the Opera await our heroine in the moments to follow? We won't spoil the outcome for you, of course, but suffice it to say th...
BWW Review: Murfreesboro's Best Ever? THE LITTLE MERMAID Stakes A Claim for the Title
There's absolutely no need to equivocate, make comparisons or to otherwise water down this particularly judgmental opinion: The Little Mermaid - the stage version of the Disney musical about a gamine sea creature who longs to become human which is now onstage at Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts th...
BWW Review: Noah Rice-led ANNIE Brings Spirit to The Keeton's Summer Show
Annie, the Broadway musical by Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin and Thomas Meehan, is something of a community theater warhorse - a show that is sure to bring in throngs of theater-goers despite the oftentimes scornful dismay of the theaterati - along the same lines as Steel Magnolias, Grease and, we...
BWW Review: Radical Arts' BARE Features Strong Performances from Rising Actors
Without a doubt, an individual's teenage years can be fraught with tension and riddled with despair and even when that is leavened by the joy of self-discovery and the constant gaining of knowledge that accompanies adolescence, there's a steep learning curve that some are unable to embrace gracefull...
BWW Review: Verge Theater Company Inaugurates The Barbershop Theatre With Wondrous KIMBERLY AKIMBO
Verge Theater Company continues its trajectory as one of Nashville's leading and most adventurous theater companies with its wondrous production of David Lindsay-Abaire's Kimberly Akimbo, featuring an astonishing and electrifying five-person cast under the superb direction of Laramie Hearn. Ki...
BWW Review: Circle Players' Closes its 17-18 Season With BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Now onstage at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre as the concluding production of Circle Players' 2017-18 season, Disney's Beauty and the Beast is brought to life by an eager-to-please cast and crew, giving further proof to the universality of the story and the continued delight of audiences lucky enoug...
BWW Review: Street Theater Company's Ultra-Cool, Ultra-Insider(y) Take on [title of show]
Why am I writing about my obvious journalistic shortcomings now for what could be construed for the third time? Street Theatre Company's production of the Hunter Bell-Jeff Bowen musical [title of show] opens tonight to run through June 23 - and last night I was part of the preview audience, having b...
BWW Review: WAITRESS Captures The Heart of Nashville During TPAC Run
There comes a moment late in act two of Waitress, the Jessie Nelson-Sara Bareilles musical now onstage at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall, when Desi Oakley - the actress portraying Jenna Hunterson, the show's very pregnant heroine - finds herself bathed in the bright glow of a...
BWW Review: Verge Theater's THE FLICK Best of 2018 to Date
At first blush, it would be easy to say that there's not much action packed into Annie Baker's The Flick - now onstage in a noteworthy production from Nashville's Verge Theater Company at Belmont's Black Box Theater - but that is, in fact, a pretty simplistic take on a story that is as complex and a...
BWW Review: Young, DeGarmo and Doolittle Star in Studio Tenn's Stylish Revival of GREASE
Grease has been a part of the American musical theater vernacular for so long - it opened in Chicago some 47 years ago in the halcyon days of 1971 - that it's easy to overlook the show's impact on theater, in general, and audiences, in particular. Its multiple revivals on Broadway, in regional theat...
BWW Review: THE LITTLE FOXES Captivatingly Shines Spotlight on Power and Greed at Darkhorse Theatre
There's something striking about the way that THE LITTLE FOXES manages to leave an impact on its viewers, not with flash and spectacle, but with its piercing dialogue and moral complexity....
Videos
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Mean Girls the Musical Playhouse on the Square (8/21-9/13) |
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The Book of Mormon (Non-Equity) Tennessee Performing Arts Center (6/02-6/07) |
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Disney's Beauty and the Beast Orpheum Theatre (6/02-6/07) |
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International Folk Dancers South Jackson Performing Arts Center (6/09-6/09) |
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame Source One Five (6/05-6/13) |
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Tribute Tellico Community Playhouse (6/04-6/21) PHOTOS |
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Manual Cinema’s The 4th Witch OZ Arts Nashville (6/04-6/06) |
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Merrily We Roll Along Hendersonville Performing Arts Company (5/28-6/14) |
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Les Miserables Playhouse on the Square (5/28-6/27) |
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NMTN Presents: The First Stage Analog @ The Hutton Hotel with ASCAP (6/13-6/13) |
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