Nashville Theater Reviews
View the latest BroadwayWorld reviews of live + streaming theatre in Nashville.

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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?...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...