Nashville Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 18

BWW Reviews: ACT 1's Dismal DEATHTRAP
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 09, 2015

And that, gentle readers, is just the first problem with ACT 1's season-opening production of Ira Levin's Deathtrap, a sturdy, if perhaps shopworn, theatrical thriller now onstage through October 17 at Darkhorse Theater. Directed and produced by Susan Cole, Deathtrap features a notable cast of exper...

BWW Review: Lauren Gunderson's THE TAMING From TWTP
by Jeffrey Ellis - October 06, 2015

It's all in the timing. No matter if you're delivering a joke, performing a new play or just putting something noteworthy out into the ether, the key to success is often just a matter of good timing. Case in point: the recently crowned Miss America 2016 came into the pageant as Miss Georgia - and in...

BWW Review: Studio Tenn's Exquisite GYPSY Revival
by Jeffrey Ellis - September 25, 2015

Nan Gurley's stunning performance of Mama Rose is reason enough to see Studio Tenn's 2015-16 season opening production of Gypsy - the legendary backstage musical about the rise to stardom of Gypsy Rose Lee - but there is so much more to be found in director Matt Logan's sumptuously appointed show th...

BWW Reviews: DIRTY DANCING Mambos Onto The TPAC Stage
by Jeffrey Ellis - September 23, 2015

You don't have to be an aficionado of Dirty Dancing, the 1987 film starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey as a mismatched romantic duo brought together by some sexy dance moves at a Catskills resort, to find yourself loving every moment of Dirty Dancing, The Classic Story On Stage, now ensconced ...

BWW Review: Nashville Rep's RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN
by Jeffrey Ellis - September 10, 2015

An exciting and incisive script, enacted by an ensemble of Nashville's finest actors under the direction of a confident, focused woman who knows how to make compelling theater come to life with style and aplomb…that's what we've come to expect from Nashville Repertory Theatre over the past thirty-so...

BWW Reviews: ARSENIC AND OLD LACE at Chaffin's Barn
by Jeffrey Ellis - September 09, 2015

Arsenic and Old Lace, Joseph Kesselring's iconic stage comedy cum murder mystery that plays on the pop culture aspects of life in 1940s Brooklyn, has been around so long - and produced so often - that you might, at first blush, consider it just another title from theater's storied past, one that see...

BWW Reviews: HEATHERS: THE MUSICAL Brings the Eighties Back
by Cara Richardson - August 31, 2015

Friday night, Street Theatre Company continued their history of bringing edgy, daring theatre to the Nashville theatrical community. HEATHERS: THE MUSICAL is the latest venture for Street Theatre Company. Based on the 1989 movie of the same name, starring Wynona Rider and Christian Slater as Veronic...

BWW Review: Circle Players' AMERICAN IDIOT Rocks Nashvile
by Cara Richardson - August 23, 2015

AMERICAN IDIOT is about a generation of youth disenchanted with the world around them, angry about things they don't understand, and scrambling to find their place in the world. A post- 9/11 look at America, AMERICAN IDIOT has more rage and love than most theatrical audiences are probably used to s...

BWW Review: THE LAST 5 YEARS Brings the Complexities of Relationships to the Nashville Stage
by Cara Richardson - August 16, 2015

Nashville shows her talent yet again, by way of VWA Theatricals' inaugural production, THE LAST 5 YEARS. With a two person cast and a nearly completely sung through book, THE LAST 5 YEARS follows the relationship of Jamie, a young writing prodigy, and Cathy, an aspiring actress....

BWW Reviews: ALL SHOOK UP at Chaffin's Barn
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 24, 2015

Elvis Presley – aka “The King,” Tupelo's most famous favorite son and Memphis' most revered musical icon – sure had a lot of music in his catalogue of hits, and it seems that almost  all of it is included in the score of All Shook Up, the jukebox musical now onstage at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre ...

BWW Reviews: TUNA DOES VEGAS at Gaslight Dinner Theatre
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 22, 2015

Here's some unsolicited career advice for those of you who might be considering relocating to Tuna, the third smallest town in Texas:  Tunanians - or Tunaites or however they refer to themselves - are sorely in need of a good beauty operator to help them keep their unruly wigs in shipshape, Bristol ...

BWW Reviews: Blackbird Theater's Musical MYTH
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 20, 2015

To give credit where credit is indeed due: Wes Driver and Greg Greene, with the creation of Blackbird Theatre, have given Nashville audiences some of the finest theater of the past five years, consistently providing thoughtful and provocative drama and music to a public clamoring for more intellectu...

BWW Reviews: BRING IT ON, THE MUSICAL at Arts Center of Cannon County
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 13, 2015

Truth be told, one of my favorite movies is Bring It On, the story of competitive cheerleading starring Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford and Gabrielle Union - and if I had a dollar for every time I've uttered the phrase 'Brrr…it's cold in here, there must be some Toros in the atmosphere' ...

BWW Reviews: KB Productions' TRAILER TRASH HOUSEWIFE
by Jeffrey Ellis - July 04, 2015

You have to wonder why it took someone so long to bring Del Shores' The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife to the Nashville stage. After all, the play opened to widespread acclaim in Los Angeles in 2003 and was made into a movie in 2011 (Blues for Willadean)....

BWW Reviews: Renaissance Players' SHREK THE MUSICAL
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 23, 2015

The company is back onstage for its summer offering of Shrek the Musical, the Jeanine Tesori-David Lindsay Abaire stage musical based upon the delightful animated film that first introduced us to the green ogre Shrek, his lady love Fiona, the unctuous Lord Farquaad and a feisty, straight-talking don...

BWW Reviews: Studio Tenn's THE WIZARD OF OZ
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 15, 2015

There are certain things audiences have come to expect in a new production from Studio Tenn, the Franklin-based, Nashville-nurtured professional theater company headed up by Matt Logan and Jake Speck: You know it will be beautifully designed, sumptuously mounted and impeccably cast....

BWW Reviews: NOBODY'S PERFECT at Chaffin's Barn
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 13, 2015

For 49 years, Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre has provided a theatrical home for actors, directors, designers, stage managers and sundry other artists and techies who are striving to make a living in Nashville. In that time, the Chaffins have served up tons of roast beef and enough marinated mushrooms...

BWW Review: Street Theatre Company's DOGFIGHT
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 07, 2015

It's 1967 and a young Marine, returning from a life-changing experience in Vietnam, is on a bus bound for San Francisco, the site of his last hurrah in 1963: a momentous night before he shipped out for Okinawa in the company of friends and cohorts with whom he'd created a bond he thought would last ...

BWW Reviews: ACT 1's DOG SEES GOD
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 06, 2015

With an experienced hand guiding a production, you can rest assured that any show - no matter its theatrical lineage or how often it has been revived - will be filled with flashes of creativity and imagination. Case in point: director Jim Manning's mounting of Bert V. Royal's Dog Sees God, now onsta...

BWW Reviews: The Keeton's GUYS AND DOLLS
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 05, 2015

Is there anything more magical or more transformative than live theater? Honestly, I can't think of anything which can take you from the depths of despair to the fanciful heights of imagination so quickly - and there certainly is no art form in which things can change so capriciously or quicker, eit...

BWW Reviews: A CLOSER WALK WITH PATSY CLINE
by Jeffrey Ellis - June 05, 2015

That will also explain my rapturous response to the performance of A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline, a dramatized tribute to the country music superstar that opened at Dickson's Gaslight Dinner Theater on Thursday, June 4, running for a much-too-short two weekends at what was once known as The Renaiss...