Nashville Theater Reviews

BWW Review: David Lee's 'Sparkling and Winning' Adaptation of LERNER AND LOEWE'S CAMELOT at Studio Tenn
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 07, 2022

Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot, the 1960 musical based on the legend of King Arthur and his knights of the round table and adapted from the T.H. White novel The Once and Future King, is now onstage in Franklin, in an entertaining, sparkling and winningly fast-paced rendition from Studio Tenn. Under the ...

BWW Review: Tony Award-winning Revival of RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN'S OKLAHOMA! Plays Nashville This Week
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 04, 2022

Yet perhaps at no time during its vaunted and venerated history has Oklahoma! been so polarizing as it has become now, thanks to the 2019 Broadway revival directed by Daniel Fish which is touring the provinces. Setting up shop on the expansive stage of Andrew Jackson Hall at Nashville’s Tennessee Pe...

BWW Review: After Two-Year Covid Delay, Nashville Rep's MARY POPPINS Finally Flies Into Polk Theatre
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 01, 2022

After more than two years since its original opening night was set in 2020, Nashville Repertory Theatre’s eagerly anticipated production of Disney’s Mary Poppins – the stage musicalization of P.L. Travers’ tales of the acerbic British nanny and her oft-misbehaving charges – has finally landed on the...

BWW Review: Actors Bridge Ensemble Returns With Gloriously Heartfelt TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS
by Jeffrey Ellis - April 10, 2022

After two years in real time – which seems like more than two decades in these weird pandemic times in which we’ve been living most recently – Nashville’s critically and audience-acclaimed theater company Actors Bridge Ensemble is back in the business of producing live theater. And may we say, on be...

BWW Review: WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME Stuns Nashville Audiences in TPAC Run
by Jeffrey Ellis - March 31, 2022

If it were at all possible – say, if I were rich or something akin to being rich – I would buy huge blocks of tickets to Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me so that everyone could see it and be as affected by it as I was. For to be quite honest, What the Constitution Means to Me is one...

BWW Review: SUMMER - The Donna Summer Musical Brings The Diva's Story Home to Nashville
by Jeffrey Ellis - March 24, 2022

And while that is one of the true musical highlights of Summer – The Donna Summer Musical, it also focuses attention on the fact that the musical itself – or, rather, its problematic book – often seems unable to figure out how to focus the spotlight on its heroine. Taking a non-linear pathway throug...

BWW Review: DEAR EVAN HANSEN Returns to Nashville, As Poignant And Powerful As Ever
by Jeffrey Ellis - March 05, 2022

As poignant and as moving – and certainly just as emotionally draining – as you may remember from its first run at Nashville’s Tennessee Performing Arts Center in September 2019, Dear Evan Hansen has settled into TPAC’s Andrew Jackson Hall for a limited engagement through Sunday, featuring a stellar...

BWW Review: Nashville Children's Theatre's World Premiere of PETER PAN: WENDY'S ADVENTURE TO NEVERLAND
by Jeffrey Ellis - March 01, 2022

There is no place more magical – no art form more transformative – than the theater and now, thanks to the continued creativity and sense of wonder shared by Ernie Nolan and David Weinstein (given an assist from a timeless tale by J.M. Barrie), audiences are treated to an exhilarating flight of fanc...

BWW Review: Studio Tenn's Emotional and Heartfelt IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE Brings Magic to the Holiday Season
by Jeffrey Ellis - December 22, 2021

Cassidy has very cleverly reconfigured the piece to be presented as a radio play, presented in 1947 on local Franklin radio station, WAKM, adding some dialogue that rings authentic of the era and certain to gain a reaction from the play’s audience. In less capable hands, this new conceit could be co...

BWW Review: WE NEED A LOT OF CHRISTMAS Keeps the Holiday Spirit Alive
by Jeffrey Ellis - December 20, 2021

Nothing can put you in the holiday spirit quite so quickly – or so successfully – as being treated to a musical presentation filled with Christmastide tunes, performed by a swell ensemble of uber-talented performers (with some comedy bits thrown in for good measure, along with a generous dollop of o...

BWW Review: Creativity and Kindness Abound in Nashville Children's Theatre's THE ELVES AND THE SHOEMAKER
by Jeffrey Ellis - December 07, 2021

What better way then to kick off your own seasonal schedule of happenings and events than a return – for a timely reminder about what the holiday season should be about – to Nashville Children’s Theatre for their colorful and entertaining adaptation of The Elves and the Shoemaker?...

BWW Review: Belmont University Musical Theatre Comes Roaring Back With Fabulous URINETOWN THE MUSICAL
by Jeffrey Ellis - November 13, 2021

Anyone who’s been even the least bit concerned about the future of musical theater, in general, or the status of Belmont University Musical Theatre, in particular, need worry no more. The multi-talented triple threats studying on the Nashville campus, under the tutelage of program coordinator Nancy ...

BWW Review: Star-Studded RAGTIME Heralds Nashville Repertory Theatre's Return to Live Performance
by Jeffrey Ellis - November 11, 2021

Ragtime, the Tony Award-winning musical about life in these United States during the very early years of the 20th century, is a richly drawn and evocatively told rumination on the pursuit of the American dream seen from the perspective of a diverse, multi-ethnic cast of characters. Now onstage throu...

BWW Review: Lipscomb University Theatre's MAMMA MIA Is Exactly What's Needed Onstage Now
by Jeffrey Ellis - November 06, 2021

In October 2001, Mamma Mia! opened on Broadway, just weeks after the horrific events of 9/11, and most pundits had little inkling that the show – a jukebox musical comprised of ABBA hits and the story of a young girl trying to divine the identity of her father from among three of her mother’s suitor...

BWW Review: The Horrifying Realities of THE DARKNESS AND OTHER BLACK THINGS
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 31, 2021

Make no mistake about it, Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva is a formidable presence in any room. And when that room is a theater, her personality fills the space like no other to be found on a Nashville stage. Therefore, it should come as no surprise whatsoever that when the house opens at The Barbershop The...

BWW Review: Street Theater Company Comes Roaring Back With LIZZIE: THE MUSICAL at Darkhorse Theatre
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 24, 2021

Lizzie Borden, who maintained her innocence of the axe murders of her father and stepmother until the day she died in 1927, was very possibly the progenitor of every piece of tabloid journalism that continues to titillate readers to this very day. Who better than she then to become the protagonist i...

BWW Review: THE LIGHTNING THIEF Hits Its Stride in New Production at Nashville Children's Theatre
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 24, 2021

Throughout its long, venerated history, Nashville Children’s Theatre has broken barriers and set the standard for excellence in theater for younger audiences and its latest production – The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical – proves no less challenging than anything that has come before it....

BWW Review: THE BAND'S VISIT Brings Broadway Back to Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 20, 2021

I’m happy to admit that while I am indeed euphoric, I remain clear-eyed in the knowledge that this particular cultural offering is unique in its storytelling and in the characters who will live for years to come until the very last person who remembers experiencing the exhilaration of the return of ...

BWW Review: Post-Pandemic DRIVING MISS DAISY at Cumberland County Playhouse Gains Renewed Vigor
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 14, 2021

One of the most glorious attributes of the theater is the experience of seeing a play you know quite well due to multiple productions over the years and to somehow find it fresh and invigorating, as if it is the first time all over again. Such is the case with Alfred Uhry’s seemingly ubiquitous Driv...

BWW Review: Slow Pacing and Poor Blocking Choices Hamper Consider This' THE ODD COUPLE
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 13, 2021

Consider This Theater Company’s production of The Odd Couple (now onstage through Sunday, July 18, at Mills-Pate Arts Center in Murfreesboro) on opening night showed great promise during Act One, only to be overwhelmed by poor blocking choices and lackluster pacing in Act Two (which, in reality, is ...

BWW Review: AcTEENg and Murfreesboro Little Theatre's Powerful Restaging of THE LARAMIE PROJECT
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 09, 2021

When Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in 1998, anyone could scarcely have known or even surmised the impact his life would have on people the world over and today, almost 23 years after the fact, his presence on this earth continues to be felt in ways both momentous and personal....

BWW Review: Nashville Children's Theatre Returns With Imaginative and Immersive CHARLOTTE'S WEB
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 01, 2021

Welcoming audiences to an NCT production for the first time in 16 months – albeit outside and away from its traditional theater space in downtown Nashville and relocated to a working farm west of Nashville – Nolan and his team have crafted the best possible production to herald the company’s reemerg...

BWW Review: AN EVENING WITH PLAYHOUSE 615: BROADWAY MUSICAL REVIEW
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 28, 2021

Sometimes, when life is getting you down, there is nothing more pleasing than hearing some showtunes performed by a game and capable lot of performers with the intent of nothing more controversial than lifting your spirits and entertaining you in the way they know best. And that, my friends, is exac...

BWW Review: Adam Pascal 'So Far...' Charms Audience at Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 13, 2021

As you might imagine, Adam Pascal – the Tony Award-nominated star of Rent, who went on to play Radames in Elton John’s Aida on Broadway, William Shakespeare in Something Rotten, among an impressive list of roles (including Chicago’s Billy Flynn, Memphis the Musical’s Huey Calhoun and the emcee in Ca...

BWW Review: Cumberland County Playhouse's DUCK HUNTER SHOOTS ANGELS Makes You Laugh, Makes You Think
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 08, 2021

ou have to hand it to Mitch Albom (the well-known sportswriter turned memoirist turned playwright turned heartland media mogul): the man knows how to craft a tale certain to appeal to a wide swath of his audience, manipulating and cajoling them along the way with good humor and sometimes incisive wi...