NASHVILLE THEATER REVIEWS

Thanks to Street Theatre Company's stellar production of the William Finn-Rachel Sheinkin-Rebecca Feldman musical comedy, I'll be wallowing in self-pity (or maybe I'll be just a little melancholy and sanguine) until I find better ways to occupy my time and better memories to fill my mind - or a brig...

For women in the audience (and both women and men came out in droves this past weekend for the opening of Potty Talk at the Darkhorse; making reservations for this week's upcoming performances is a very good idea), I suspect that the shared camaraderie of the ladies' room is a given. For men in the ...

Rife with corruption and intrigue, teeming with forbidden love and deception, Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto is among the most often performed operas in America - and Nashville Opera closes out its 2009-2010 season with a beautifully designed and sumptuously mounted production of the Italian masterpiece...

Despite a few glimmers of hope and the promise of a transformative evening of theatre, the current Circle Players production of To Kill a Mockingbird is a thoroughly passionless and completely uninspired staging of Harper Lee's classic Southern tale and, clearly, is one of the biggest disappointment...

McCarthy's boyishly appealing Matt, Sonn's winsomely beguiling Luisa and Sevier's beautifully sung El Gallo are, clearly, the lynchpins that guarantee audiences will respond favorably to the show, and they are given ample support from a gifted veteran cast assembled by Morton. Morton's direction is ...

Led by the exquisitely voiced Dayna Jarae Dantzler in the pivotal role of Celie, we are taken on a journey of almost 40 years in the lives of Walker's richly drawn characters, to learn the true lessons of life and love. The story is as moving as it has ever been - Walker's novel relates the story of...

But three other individuals are perhaps most responsible for the overall delight that is Tennessee Rep's 25th Anniversary season production: director Rene Dunshee Copeland, whose imaginative work helps to re-invent this musical on a basis that is at once more intimate while, somehow, is on a grander...

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee's scathing evisceration of marriage and indictment of suburban morality - is brought to the Nashville stage once again in a superbly acted and confidently directed production from Artists Cooperative Theatre 1 (ACT 1). First staged by ACT 1 in its 1989-...

It's 1939 and producer David O. Selznick (played by Derek Whittaker) finds himself under the gun: He only has seven days to fashion a shooting script for his epic film version of Margaret Mitchell's worldwide bestseller. Virtually every writer of note (including Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzger...

You know you have a hit musical on your hands when audience members leave the theatre humming the songs they just heard. But you know you have a mega-hit musical onstage when those audience members are of the six-, seven-, or eight-year-old variety and they are singing the show's songs and dancing t...

Clearly, Osborne and Eppler are writing about the people, places and things they have known from birth (in fact, on opening night, Osborne's family members from Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee were on hand to witness the world premiere of the play, thus his pedigree is assured) and they display an i...

Thanks to Kathleen Clark's genuinely funny Secrets of a Soccer Mom, now onstage in an entertaining production from Maryanna Clarke and Tennessee Women's Theater Project, you get a glimpse at the 'real' reality of the lives of soccer moms, as opposed to the reality you may have been led to expect. Be...

Amanda Lamb gives such a stunningly real performance as the heroine in Neil Labute's Fat Pig - now onstage at Nashville's Darkhorse Theatre in a well-paced and sensitively directed production from Paul J. Cook for GroundWorks Theatre - that it's hard not to confuse the actress and her character or t...

Featuring the powerhouse vocals of an immensely talented cast, set against the visual artistry of Mark Thompson's production design, it becomes clearer with each performance that Phyllida Lloyd's direction remains relevant and fresh and that Anthony Van Laast's choreography is as clever and imaginat...

It's a completely winning production from top to bottom: Osborne's direction is sure-handed and confident, his players' readings of their roles pitch-perfect and the technical elements and design aesthetic for the piece are delightfully on-target. It's essential, of course, in a comedy of British or...

Director Don Griffiths' staging of Miller's now-classic tragedy, with its echoes of the Greek classics, is heart-wrenching, certain to stir up all the emotions one can muster. Beautifully designed and executed, with superb performances from a cast that includes professional actors from Actors Bridge...

Actress-playwright-producer Mary McCallum gives an extraordinarily strong and vibrant performance as aviatrix Bessie Coleman in her self-written new historical drama, Fly, Girl!, now in its premiere production at Darkhorse Theatre, courtesy of SistaStyle Productions. With an outstanding supporting e...

So what's the problem with Moon Over Buffalo? Oh yeah, despite all the good stuff, Ken Ludwig's script is also leaden, filled with cliches and one-dimensional characters, with enough convoluted situations to render the play stupefying. With the Towne Centre Theatre production, this is clearly a case...

As good as Swing! is - and it is very good despite some dangerously frightening near-misses and a rather frenetic pace - one thing bothers me: Why did Adams-Johnson, borrowing a journalistic reference, bury her lead in the middle of the second act? Every journalism student learns in News Writing 101...

If you love musical theatre, you'll absolutely fall in love with The Drowsy Chaperone, the fun and frothy show now holding sway in Andrew Jackson Hall at Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center. Winner of five Tony Awards (more than any other musical in the 2005-'06 season), The Drowsy Chaperon...

Rene Dunshee Copeland is, perhaps, the best stage director in Nashville (competing with her husband, Scot Copeland, the heart and soul of Nashville Children's Theatre, for claim to the imagined title), having brought some of the most memorable works to local stages during her career . And with Tenne...

There may be actors who could give better performances as john and jen than Patrick Waller and Martha Wilkinson but they would have to be some sort of imaginary, dream-like apparitions to even come close to the stunningly brave and thoroughly focused interpretations given by these two exemplary Nash...

How important then is this play - now onstage at Nashville Children's Theatre in a stunning production helmed by NCT producing director Scot Copeland - designed for younger audiences? Frankly, its impact is immeasurable, but it most certainly presents the story of young diarist Anne Frank in such a ...

Signs of a New Day is not a perfect play, by many measures, but the fact that it focuses on Looby - whose name almost every Nashvillian most certainly knows, but someone about whom they know precious little - elevates it to near-perfection. Thanks to German's extensive research and dedication to det...

You don't have to be a dog lover to enjoy The 101 Dalmatians Musical, but it doesn't hurt! Now onstage at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall, the national touring company of the musical by Dennis DeYoung and BT McNicholl delivers a production that is pleasantly diverting, tun...