NASHVILLE THEATER REVIEWS

Thanks to Carolyn German and her efforts to engage younger performers through musical theater and cabaret, Nashville area producers and directors should have a consistent supply of new and interesting actors (who clearly comprehend the history and legacy of musical theater) for their shows for years...

Directed and choreographed by the multi-talented Bryan Wlas, who plays Ambrose Kemper in this musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker, The Renaissance Players' production is lovingly brought to the stage by a large cast of locals - some making their stage debuts, some coming out of s...

Five exceptional young talents take on the songbook of one of America's favorite pop/folk/country music performers in Roxy Regional Theatre's production of Almost Heaven: Songs of John Denver, now onstage in Clarksville through July 2. Directed with obvious affection and respect for the musical revu...

By turns, Duck Hunter Shoots Angel will make you laugh out loud, consider deep and philosophical questions and, perhaps, even shed a few tears. Certainly, it's funny and heartwarming, and yet another example of writer Mitch Albom's estimable ability to provoke thought while entertaining - which, qui...

Who among us doesn't love a suspenseful yet wickedly entertaining melodrama about an eight-year-old sociopath who lets nothing stand in the way of her lifelong quest to get exactly what she wants? Whether it's a penmanship medal, a crystal ball, a garnet from a necklace - or even to prevent a trip t...

Alfred Uhry is a wonderful writer who perfectly captures the tone and cadence of the Southern accent, infusing his works for the theater with a pervasive appreciation and respect for his native region. Among contemporary Southern playwrights, he is in the upper echelons, creating compelling stories ...

There comes a moment, very early on in Kate Adams-Johnson's A Chorus Line (which opened last night at The Keeton Theatre) in which, one by one, each of the actors is caught in the spotlight, with some portentous musical underscoring that heightens the emotional impact of the moment. But what's reall...

Truth be told, the exit signs in Laura Turner Hall at Nashville's world-class Schermerhorn Symphony Center are always illuminated in green, but if Tony Award-winner Idina Menzel wants to think the color of the exit signs were a down-home homage to her Wickedly famous role on Broadway, then so be it....

Darkly comic and deathly serious - with moments of lyrical, poetic power intermingled with the jarring realities of missed opportunities and regret - John Patrick Shanley's Sailor's Song is given an artfully mounted, superbly acted and inspiringly directed production from Actors Bridge Ensemble, con...

I Do! I Do!, the Tom Jones-Harvey Schmidt musical now onstage at Franklin's Boiler Room Theatre through June 11, is a heartfelt two-character musical that - by the end of its two-hour running time - is more like a visit with two old friends, so completely engaging are the show's stars and the sweetl...

Nicole Begue Hackman is so perfectly cast as Eliza Doolittle in Lerner and Loewe classic My Fair Lady at Cumberland County Playhouse that all those other characters that people the musical may seem superfluous, despite the splendid performances of the rest of the cast. Oh, certainly, their character...

Like Rodney Dangerfield before him, Frank Wildhorn gets no respect in musical theater circles. Despite the relative success of his first widely known work for musical theater - Jekyll and Hyde, a popular if not exactly critical success - Wildhorn's subsequent musicals have been met with lukewarm pra...

As powerfully moving as it has ever been, Les Miserables - the epic musicalization of Victor Hugo's classic novel by Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil - returns to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center for an eight-performance stand this week, in a visually commanding , artfully re-imagined a...

N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker has been a part of our collective pop culture and theatrical canon for years and is probably best known because of the 1956 film version that starred Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster, which has cast its indelible shadow on every intervening stage production since ...

Joel Drake Johnson's The Fall to Earth is an atypical, darkly comic - yet at the same time very serious - take on the conventional mother/daughter tale. Now presented in an exceptional new production from Nashville's GroundWorks Theatre, The Fall to Earth stars an extraordinary trio of actresses who...

Quite simply, with Long Way Down Eppler proves himself a playwright of the highest order, delivering a well-crafted script that delves into the pro-life movement with an incisive wit that is blended artfully with a gritty realism to create a completely believable premise, peopled by characters so ge...

Of course, one way around that theatrical conundrum is to take the route that director Scott Logsdon and Keeping Scores Concerts at Franklin's Boiler Room Theatre have embarked upon for three performances this weekend: Cast 12 different actresses as Fanny Brice, each one well-qualified to take on a ...

Over the years, Rene Dunshee Copeland, Pam Atha and Martha Wilkinson have collaborated numerous times on all sorts of musicals - and among them, they have garnered the lion's share of First Night Awards presented for achievement in musical theater in Nashville - and so it's pretty damn exciting for ...

Nashville's Circle Players, now in its 61st season and the oldest community theatre in Middle Tennessee, has scored one of its biggest hits ever with the current production of Jason Robert Brown's 13. Who'd have ever thought that the musical tale of a 13-year-old Jewish boy from NYC who is transplan...

Matt Logan could easily have rested on his laurels and simply re-staged the second offering of showHOPE's Cinderella, the Enchanted Edition in exactly the same manner as he did in 2010 - it was a magical evening, at the very least, and it would certainly be easier, acceptable even to his most loyal ...

There must be something in the water on campus at Nashville's Belmont University - sure, the theatre and musical theatre faculty's skills are virtually unparalleled, but it's the talent, the quality and the devotion to their craft of the students that truly boggles the mind and is worthy of unbridle...

Coming between Lips Together, Teeth Apart and Love! Valour! Compassion! in the canon of Terrence McNally's works, A Perfect Ganesh - despite its Pulitzer Prize nomination - remains relatively unknown, seldom produced and somewhat unappreciated by theater audiences. But if you share an appreciation f...

John Bishop's The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 is a deliciously campy send-up of movies, mysteries and musicals - and now, thanks to a top-flight production from Brentwood's Towne Centre Theatre, local audiences can once again revel in the play's cleverly constructed, though thoroughly implausible...

Newman - whom we hereby crown 'the doyenne of Nashville cabaret' - hints that more be on our artistic horizon, telling her audience Saturday night that she hopes to spread the gospel of cabaret to a larger audience on a more regular basis. Clearly, if anyone can do it, it is she: Ginger Newman (whom...