NASHVILLE THEATER REVIEWS

Now onstage through this weekend as part of Lipscomb University's theatre department's 2014-15 season, the Beki Baker-directed rendition of Friel's exquisitely written play is brought to life by an impressive cast of eight student actors who are given ample opportunity to show us exactly what they h...

Now onstage at TPAC's Andrew Johnson Theatre as the season-ending production from Nashville Repertory Theatre, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike has a lot to say and, for the most part, it does so with vigor and bite. Durang's play somehow remains an artful blending of hilarity and gloom that succ...

Its Vacation Bible School vibe aside, Godspell - the Stephen Schwartz musical from 1971 that grew from a class project at Carnegie Mellon University that most recently was revived on Broadway in 2011 - relates the parables of Jesus Christ in a sprightly, colorful way that can be entertaining and elu...

Hitting perhaps too close to home for some and harkening back to memories best left unrecalled, while challenging audiences to examine their own lives, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman remains an emotional, visceral theatrical masterpiece. Now, through March 28, it is vividly recaptured, like so ...

Street Theatre Company has brought a little bit of Memphis to Music City with their production of Memphis: The Musical. The show opened Friday night at Street Theatre Company's new location, Bailey Middle School. This is the first regional production in Tennessee since the touring Broadway productio...

The touring production of PIPPIN landed in Nashville Tuesday night to begin their week of magic and mystery at Tennessee Performing Arts Center....

For 40-some years now, Stephen Schwartz's Pippin, the musical about an inquisitive young man in search of meaning in his life - and, notwithstanding, the actual meaning of life - has enraptured audiences, inspired legions of theater devotees and provided any number of young men (and a not insignific...

Eddie George, actor. After years of pursuing his dream, of plying his trade, perfecting his craft, it is now apparent that Eddie George - the once and future Tennessee Titan, pro football Hall of Fame member, Heisman Trophy winner, the very personification of professional sports in a town known worl...

Nashville Repertory Theatre brings a thoughtful and complex story to Nashville audiences with the production of The Whipping Man. With a small cast, The Whipping Man makes perfect sense for a smaller theatre. Nashville Repertory Theatre's production adds man special touches to the show to bring a sp...

Arriving at Dickson's Gaslight Dinner Theatre just in time for Valentine's Day and all those accompanying celebrations of love and marriage is I Do! I Do!, the other Tom Jones/Harvey Schmidt musical (with The Fantasticks being the other other one - my apologies to fans of 110 in the Shade), that det...

Last night Nashville was doused with glitter and love as Kinky Boots, the Tony Award winning musical, opened at Tennessee Performing Arts Center. With a book by Harvey Fierstein and music & lyrics by Cyndi Lauper, it is easy to see why Kinky Boots swept the Tony Awards in 2013....

As staged in the six-time Tony Award-winning show, the moment is at once tremendously uncomfortable and remarkably eye-opening, making the audience squirm in their seats due to the unease and the sense of voyeuristic embarrassment they feel, as if they have come upon such a scene happening in their ...

Much has been made of late about a reviewer for the Wall Street Journal - by the name of Joanne Kaufman - who recently wrote a column in which she fairly chortled about regularly sneaking out of shows she was being paid to review in order to go home early, rather than sit through sub-par productions...

If you're in need of some intense family drama leavened with heaping helpings of laughter - just like the kind Mama and them can dish up along with the grits and the gravy - then look no further than ACT 1's cracklin' production of Del Shores' Daddy's Dyin'…Who's Got the Will?...

Celebrating its 65th season, Nashville's Circle Players is Middle Tennessee's oldest community theater organization and I can think of no better way to celebrate that milestone than with the company's current show, the Tim Larson-directed version of Ragtime, the musical adaptation of the acclaimed E...

Denice Hicks' vision for Twelfth Night warmly ingratiates itself with the fluidity of its presentation, enacted by a delightful cast of NSF veterans and newcomers who envelop their audience with genuinely high-spirited good feelings sure to thaw the most frozen of hearts....

The Blue Man Group tour has made a stop in Nashville this week. Tennessee Performing Arts Center hosts the inventive show, that is full of eye-popping and mouth dropping performances…or skits….or just a 90 minute, non-stop spectacle. Think I'm complete inept when it comes to trying to describe B...

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Musical opened at Tennessee Performing Arts Center on Tuesday night. Rudolph pranced into Nashville bringing Christmas spirit along with several recognizable friends like Hermy, Yukon Cornelius, Clarice, the Abominable Snowman, and, of course, Santa Claus. Based ...

While the Renaissance Players' mounting might be a little rough around the edges, there's still plenty to recommend the show if you're in need of some Christmas cheer. Directed by Jon Kopischke, with choreography by Alaina Deaver and musical direction by SharonTaylor, Irving Berlin's White Christmas...

Two Guys and a Christmas Tree brings the holiday season to Dickson in the persons of Nick Fair, Michael J. Parker, Marilyn Whitehead Fair and Jenny Norris-Light, a quartet of capable actors and wonderful singers who provide a soundtrack for your seasonal celebrations in a sprightly holiday diversion...

Finding it difficult to get into the holiday spirit? Studio Tenn has the perfect antidote to the grey, cloudy and wet days of early December in Nashville: It's A Wonderful Life-the company's production of the stage adaptation of the iconic holiday film. If it doesn't put you in the right frame of m...

Funny and irreverent, Chaffin's Barn's A Christmas Carol-featuring a witty new adaptation by Lydia Bushfield-gives audiences the perfect entree into the whole crazy-wonderful holiday season, replete with sentimental carols, fruitcake jokes, horrid Christmas sweaters and Warren Gore on his knees....

Nashville has been blessed this week with the national touring production of The Book of Mormon. Since storming onto Broadway in 2011 and walking away with eleven Tony awards that season, The Book of Mormon has crossed from being a Broadway phenomenon to becoming a pop culture staple. If you ask any...

Two weeks after conservative Tennessee voters turned the Volunteer State a deeper shade of red and some three years after I was told The Book of Mormon likely would never play the Tennessee Performing Arts Center because its plot is too outlandish, its book too profane, its tenor too irreverent, the...

Let's be clear from the very start: Ryan Bowie gives a tour de force performance as the leading 'lady' in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, now playing in theotherspace at the Roxy Regional Theatre in Clarksville for only three more performances through Tuesday, November 18....