NASHVILLE THEATER REVIEWS

Despite the best efforts of some of Nashville's finest and most promising young actresses, who do their best with such a disappointing script, they can't bring the show to life. The play's characters-who represent some of the 1,800-plus real women who entered training in 1943 to become Womens Airfor...

Fairly exploding onto the stage, The Nutty Professor-the new musical based on the classic 1963 film comedy-opened at Nashville's James K. Polk Theatre last night in a vibrantly told and visually stunning production helmed by Jerry Lewis, the man who co-wrote the movie and, at this moment, is probabl...

McGovern creatively opens and closes the musical with an image that evokes all the glitter and glamor of old Hollywood: the presentation of the Academy Awards in 1941, the year that Ginger Rogers beat out such adversaries as Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine and Martha Scott for the best...

Pacer Harp and Bryan J. Wlas are serving up the laughs at Dickson's Gaslight Dinner Theatre via Red, White & Tuna, the third installment in the four-part "trilogy" (get it-four-part trilogy? Trilogies are actually three parts, so this is funny, y'all!) about Tuna, Texas, the third-smallest town in t...

In fact, director Kate Adams and musical director Ginger Newman have crafted Nashville's own lovely and, I daresay, star-studded version of the musical which simply proves once again that Into the Woods is one of the most enchanting, most entertaining and most moving examples of contemporary musical...

What with contemporary musical theater's artistic bent toward the nostalgic in recent years, it should come as no surprise that Happy Days, the ABC sitcom that painted an affectionate portrait of life in Milwaukee in the late 1950s/early 1960s, was adapted by the show's creator Garry Marshall and co...

In fact, Wilkinson's new and fresh version of The Odd Couple comes down to one thing: Casting. Sure, Oscar is still a slovenly and slobby, even if quick-witted, mess, and Felix is an effete fussbudget (and, if I were a psychologist, I could have a field day with all the subtext going on in that hot ...

But The Music Man? Come on, the classic Meredith Willson musical chestnut is as corny and all-American as you can possibly get (let's face it, Willson is the master of that particular genre of musical theater occupied by The Music Man and The Unsinkable Molly Brown-plus he wrote the Oscar-nominated ...

Ohmigod…ohmigod, you guys…Elle Woods-the sharp-as-a-tack, pink-clad heroine of movies and musical theater-is brought to life in Woodbury in an exuberant, if technically flawed, production of Legally Blonde, The Musical, onstage at The Arts Center of Cannon County through July 21. Directed by Mar...

Led by the maniacally perfect Billy Ditty as the appropriately named "Leading Player," the 14-member ensemble deliver a thoroughly focused performance, never straying from the job at hand to endanger the success of the production. That focus is necessary, of course, given the intimate confines of th...

Kristin Chenoweth was in Nashville last night, performing her critically acclaimed concert act just for me-oh, sure, there were another 2,000 or so people in the audience, as well, who thought she was singing just for them-but she and I both know the truth. She looked straight into my heart and sang...

There are so many starmaking turns-and some wonderfully engaging and endearing antics-onstage at Clarksville's Roxy Regional Theater in the company's revival of The Wedding Singer, that you cannot help but become a fan of the show, even if you've never seen the movie that inspired the onstage musica...

Playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb knows how to deliver such a dramatic jolt and he does so in his play boom, the season-ending production from Sideshow, the "project" of Actors Bridge Ensemble that has brought something new and exciting to Nashville theater-pushing the envelope through a series of inn...

Set in 1976, Ralph Pape's Say Goodnight, Gracie deftly blends wistful nostalgia with tinges of regret that always tend to surface when you're faced with a high school reunion. And smoking pot; smoking pot makes anything seem more complex and redolent with hidden meaning and deeper regret than when y...

Oozing charm and brimming over with sex appeal and an overabundance of stage presence, Under the Streetlamp-the quartet (Michael Ingersoll, Michael Cunio, Shonn Wiley and Christopher Kale Jones) that somehow manages to capture the sounds of multiple generations in their polished act, one that has de...

Silly, fun and farcical, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum is a delightful musical theater diversion, certain to entertain and delight. Brought to the stage in a Keeton Theatre production directed by Kate Adams, with music direction by Ginger Newman, the Stephen Sondheim- Burt Shevelove...

There's not a lot to be proud of in Crowley's epochal play that made history as the first piece for mainstream theater to look at homosexuality with a clear, if assuredly off-putting, gaze. The playwright took off the rose-colored glasses that his character Emory would likely have worn to present a ...

So, when it was announced that the almost obscenely talented duo of Holly Allen and Cathy Street would be reviving their performances for a summer 2012 run, I knew that I, fueled by a nostalgic bent and wistful sentimentality of a sort, should give it another once-over, as much for the winning portr...

Valenti (playing Rose Alvarez, Albert's girl Friday/girlfriend) and Fair (as his overbearing mother, Mae Peterson) pretty much dominate the action as they deliver perfectly-timed, expertly crafted performances as the two women in feckless Albert's life, ensuring that a good time will be had by all i...

There comes a moment late in Act Two when Tevye, the beleaguered dairyman at the center of Fiddler on the Roof, remembers his daughters in childhood and laments the loss of his beloved "Chavaleh" to marriage to a gentile, which completely encapsulates the joy and the sadness that permeates this clas...

With a cast led by Broadway veterans Jessica Grove (who ideally captures the spirit and charm of Maria in her thoroughly captivating performance) and Ben Davis (tall and commanding as the naval captain torn by conflicting loyalties and social upheaval), Logan presents The Sound of Music you would ex...

In fact, in the retrospect afforded me by twelve hours, I have to admit that the production's most revelatory performance is delivered by Mike Baum, as the long-suffering and beleaguered Dan Goodman, Diana's stalwart and steadfast husband. That doesn't mean Chambers' performance is anything less tha...

Directed by Lauren Shouse, Street Theatre Company's production is unique in its casting: Cori and Tyson Laemmel play Cathy and Jamie for the final two weekends of the run, while Kacie Phillips and Ryan Greenawalt opened, to essentially unanimous and deserved acclaim, in the roles for the first two w...

Let's face it: You have to give Paul Vasterling, the grand poobah (as both artistic director and CEO of Nashville Ballet, what other title suits him best?) of all things musical/dancical/theatrical in Music City, a whole bunch of credit for the imaginative-heretofore unexperienced-heights he has hel...

Kim Bretton, easily one of the best actors to be found anywhere, makes an auspicious Nashville debut as a director-that places her firmly among the upper echelons of that particular field of endeavor-with her thoughtful and intriguing mounting of Donald Margulies' Time Stands Still for Actors Bridge...