Nashville Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 15

BWW Review: Belmont University's Soul-Stirring PARADE
by Jeffrey Ellis - November 19, 2016

As challenging a work of theatrical artistry that you could possibly conceive of, Parade affords BUMT students a sublime opportunity in pursuit of excellence in a production that vociferously demands to be seen and experienced. It is one of the year's best musicals in a Nashville theatrical season t...

BWW Review: BOOK OF MORMON Wows 'em in Nashville
by Jeffrey Ellis - November 17, 2016

You gotta admit: A lot has changed in this world since Nashville audiences were first treated to The Book of Mormon two years ago. The extended run in 2014 at Tennessee Performing Arts Center set records for ticket sales, garnered great critical acclaim and knocked the socks off the thousands of peo...

BWW Review: Chaffin's Barn Does RED, WHITE & TUNA Up Right
by Jeffrey Ellis - November 16, 2016

Just in time to lift your spirits in the wake of a bruising presidential election season, Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre - the iconic theatrical venue, which for 50 years has delighted Nashville audiences on the chow-and-bow circuit - provides ample laughs and plenty of guffaws (along with a bountifu...

BWW Review: Lipscomb's Cinematic BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 30, 2016

There is perhaps no theme more deeply resonant in Disney's Beauty and the Beast than its treatment of the redemptive power of love to change any trouble soul - and thanks to Mike Fernandez's cinematic take on the musical theater classic and the superb leading performances of Bekah Purifoy and Scott ...

BWW Review: Actors Bridge Ensemble's Whimsical, Magical FAILURE: A LOVE STORY
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 29, 2016

Who knew that a whimsical, magical play - Philip Dawkins' evocatively written Failure: A Love Story, now onstage at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater in a thoroughly engaging production from Actors Bridge Ensemble in its 20th Anniversary Season - would speak so eloquently to that sense of pervasive loss...

BWW Review: CFTA's YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN Will Have You Laughing All The Way Home
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 25, 2016

Patrick Kramer's commanding performance as Frederick Frankenstein (that's 'FRONKENsteen' for the uninitiated) in the Center for the Arts' production of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein is reason enough to buy a ticket (if you're lucky enough to score one - shows are playing to capacity crowds in Murfr...

BWW Review: RENT's 20th Anniversary Tour Thrills TPAC Audience on Opening Night in Nashville
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 19, 2016

It's hard to believe that Jonathan Larson's epic rock musical masterpiece, Rent, debuted on Broadway, making headlines around the world, winning the Pulitzer Prize and bringing a whole new generation of audiences to the theater 20 years ago. Larson who died just prior to the show's 1996 off-Broadway...

BWW Review: Nashville Rep's All-Star Cast Shines in NOISES OFF
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 17, 2016

There comes a moment in Act Two (or maybe it's Act One - on second thought, maybe it's the second Act One, although it could be the third…) of Michael Frayn's Noises Off, now onstage at TPAC's Andrew Johnson Theatre, in which Martha Wilkinson comes onstage, hits her mark, cuts her eyes at another ac...

BWW Review: ACT 1's Outdated ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 16, 2016

Joseph Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace, a genteel and sometimes beguiling 'suspense comedy,' is a favorite among the nation's various and sundry community theater companies. And for good reason: It's slyly amusing, despite its age, and it features some genuinely engaging (if somewhat despicable, d...

BWW Review: Pewitt's Star Turn Electrifies Keeton Theatre's ANNIE GET YOUR GUN
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 07, 2016

There's something about Tonya Pewitt, a certain, almost indefinable, something that makes her an ideal musical theater leading lady (perhaps, we admit, that's a dated term in these politically correct times – we are, after all, in the 21st century and the election of the first woman president of the...

BWW Review: Vickie Bailey Directs CFTA's SUITE SURRENDER
by Jeffrey Ellis - September 23, 2016

One thing in theater seems certain: Give an accomplished and veteran director the reins to a show and you can be guaranteed they will approach the work decisively and imaginatively - no matter how weak or how strong a particular play's script may be…...

BWW Review: Nashville Ballet's Lushly Romantic CINDERELLA Opens the New Season
by Jeffrey Ellis - September 17, 2016

From the very first moment - when principal guest conductor Nathan Fifield raises his baton and the musicians of the Nashville Symphony play the very first notes of Prokofiev's lush score - it becomes apparent that Nashville Ballet's Cinderella is going to be something very special. And so it goes f...

BWW Review: Nashville Rep's THE LAST FIVE YEARS
by Jeffrey Ellis - September 16, 2016

Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years is one of the most popular contemporary musicals currently en vogue, particularly among newer (read: younger) generations of theater devotees and those older musical theater lovers “in the know.” So it should come as no surprise that Nashville Repertory Theat...

BWW Review: Studio Tenn's Stunning EVITA Makes History on Opening Night With Powerful Performances
by Jeffrey Ellis - September 10, 2016

As assured and confident as any long-running musical now - or ever, for that matter - on Broadway, the altogether worldly and completely engaging production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita, playing at Andrew Jackson Hall through September 18, gives Nashville audiences the kind of exceptional theater ...

BWW Review: Center for the Arts' Emotionally-Charged 1776
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 26, 2016

Perhaps it's a case of perfect timing - or maybe it's simply the fact that a revival of a much-beloved Tony Award-winning best musical is enough to attract a strong ensemble of men to the project - but make no mistake about it, Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts succeeds where so many companies have...

BWW Review: Nate Eppler's THE ICE TREATMENT Closes Actors Bridge's 20th Anniversary Season with Knee-capping Fun
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 20, 2016

Rachel Agee's bravura performance - which, arguably, any actor would love to add to a resume - as a fictionalized Tonya Harding-like personality is enough to guarantee that audiences will continue to talk about the world premiere production of Nate Eppler's latest work, The Ice Treatment, for years ...

IF/THEN's Stunning Performances Intrigue Nashville Audiences
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 08, 2016

Who would have ever thought a musical about urban planning could be as effective and engaging, and as thoroughly compelling (if somewhat confusing and confounding, by turns) as If/Then, the latest work from the Pulitzer Prize-winning (for next to normal) duo of Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey?...

BWW Review: Arts Center of Cannon County's ALWAYS, PATSY CLINE
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 06, 2016

Savannah Gannon makes a startling - and, no doubt, star-making - debut as country music superstar Patsy Cline in the Matt Smith-directed production of Ted Swindley's play with music Always, Patsy Cline, now onstage at Woodbury's Arts Center of Cannon County through June 18....

BWW Review: CFTA's 42nd STREET Taps Your Troubles Away
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 26, 2016

If there is a Broadway musical that more gleefully and accurately encapsulates the magic and mayhem of creating a brand spanking new blockbuster at the height of the Great Depression than 42nd Street, I want to see it post-haste!...

BWW Review: Verge Theater Company's Beautifully Acted SKINLESS
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 24, 2016

Johnna Adams is a consummate storyteller: employing fantasy and fiction, conjecture and supposition, she weaves together a tale that is at once intensely intriguing and enormously off-putting, using her skill as a writer to transport her audience to an otherworldly place that exists only in her imag...

BWW Review: Street Theatre Company's ASSASSINS Assuredly Intrigues Audiences
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 23, 2016

Stephen Sondheim's Assassins - his musical treatment of the history of presidential assassinations in America - remains one of the most compelling and intriguing works to be found in the musical theater canon, focusing on a veritable rogue's gallery of historic figures whose infamy lives on decades ...

BWW Review: The Roxy Regional Theatre's AMERICAN IDIOT is Electrifyingly Immersive
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 10, 2016

As exhilaratingly in-your-face as only the very best of contemporary theater can deliver, Green Day's American Idiot - now onstage in a startlingly emphatic and exuberant production at Clarksville's Roxy Regional Theatre - exemplifies just how far the company itself has come since its beginnings as ...

BWW Review: ACT 1's COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 09, 2016

What happens when a group of teenagers idolize a celebrity - a figure from popular culture whose charisma ensures he will live on forever despite his death at a young age - reunite some 20 years later to further venerate their crush and to recall his impact on their young lives? That's the question ...

BWW Review: 4th Story Theater's GOD OF CARNAGE
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 06, 2016

Eviscerating modern manners and mores with surgical skill and startling focus, playwright Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage is among the most popular contemporary stage comedies of the early 21st century. Now onstage in an altogether agreeable, yet unsettling, production from Nashville's 4th Story Theat...

BWW Review: Towne Centre Theatre's PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 02, 2016

Will Miranne and Daniel Morgan give top-notch performances, playing Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso in soon-to-be Lipscomb University theater grad Jonah Jackson's production of Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile, now onstage at Brentwood's Towne Centre Theatre through May 7....