Debbie Kraski

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, depending upon your perspective) characters who have entertained audiences for 75 years (it bowed on Broadway in 1941).

ACT 1's 2016-17 season officially opens with the Daniel DeVault-directed production of Joseph Kesselring's classic comedy Arsenic and Old Lace, playing Nashville's Darkhorse Theatre October 7-22, and starring Debbie Kraski and Linda Speir as the daffy yet dastardly Brewster sisters.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Nashville actor and NFL Hall of Famer Eddie George, who makes his Broadway debut Tuesday night in the iconic musical Chicago, was named First Night's Outstanding Leading Actor in a Play for his searing portrayal of a former slave haunted by the spectre of abuse in Nashville Repertory Theatre's The Whipping Man. Rene Dunshee Copeland, producing artistic director of Nashville Rep, was named Outstanding Director of a Play, while her three-actor ensemble (which included James Rudolph and Matthew Rosenbaum) were awarded as First Night's Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Play for their rendition of the Matthew Lopez play.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Turkeys are on-sale at your local supermarket, so there's no better way to know Thanksgiving is just around the corner - yep, less than two weeks away! - which means that local theater companies will be unleashing their holiday season productions with enough productions of A Christmas Story (both the musical and the play), It's A Wonderful Life and Ebenezer Scrooge-led shows that you could shake a stick at!

Thus, we are happy to present the return of one our most popular features: The Nashville Theater Calendar, a comprehensive - maybe even exhaustive (lord knows we're exhausted from putting it together, gathering all the info from all over the interwebs!) - listing of theatrical openings for the 2015/16 season. We'll update the calendar every Monday, clearing out the shows that have closed and adding additional information on the shows still to come. Something's missing? That's an easy fix: just send us a message here, on Facebook, or by email at jeffreyellis37215@att.com.

Might I offer some perhaps unsolicited advice? If you are dreading the upcoming holidays - Thanksgiving is just under three weeks away and Christmas is fast on its heels - and the typical upheaval precipitated by a trip 'over the river and through the woods' into the bosom of your family's particular brand of dysfunction, perhaps taking in a performance of ACT 1's production of Tracy Letts' August: Osage County would help you to gain some much-needed perspective. Because, trust me, your family (no matter how off-the-rails they may be at any given moment) can only compare favorably to the extended Weston clan of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

Leading the cast are three stage veterans who have been delighting local audiences for years: Debbie Kraski, Dietz Osborne and Layne Sasser, three names that are sure to attract the attention of theater-goers in the Nashville area. They agreed to take on our Friday Five questions in anticipation of tonight's opening, giving answers we feel certain will encourage you to go see them in their latest onstage adventure.

Halloween's all done in, there are still three weeks ahead before we officially give thanks, and Christmas - and all its accompanying frenzy and frivolity - is about seven weeks away! So what's there to do for all the theatrical types jonesing for a trip to make believe? Plenty! Theater companies all over middle Tennessee are showing off their best and brightest, with a number of eagerly anticipated shows opening this weekend and/or continuing from their earlier opening nights and next Tuesday there's a sparkling new Broadway musical swinging through Music City to entertain you…

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Tracy Letts' acclaimed play about a dysfunctional family coming to terms with one another - August: Osage County - opens at Nashville's iconic Darkhorse Theater on November 6, directed by Bradley Moore and featuring a veritable who's who of Nashville actors. August: Osage County, running through November 21, is presented by ACT 1 as its second show of the 2015-16 season.

Much has been made of late about a reviewer for the Wall Street Journal - by the name of Joanne Kaufman - who recently wrote a column in which she fairly chortled about regularly sneaking out of shows she was being paid to review in order to go home early, rather than sit through sub-par productions of questionable quality.

You will not believe it! The last time we gave you a Music City Confidential (number seven), the London Olympics were winding up, LaToya Gardner and Kevin Mead were starring in Circle Players' Aida, Maggie Richardson and Cody Rutledge were headlining Xanadu at the Arts Center of Cannon County, and Music City was caught up in Nutty Professor fever! Today marks the return of Music City Confidential and we hope you'll be feeling particularly thankful for edition number 8.

Funny and irreverent, Chaffin's Barn's A Christmas Carol-featuring a witty new adaptation by Lydia Bushfield-gives audiences the perfect entree into the whole crazy-wonderful holiday season, replete with sentimental carols, fruitcake jokes, horrid Christmas sweaters and Warren Gore on his knees.

Despite terrific performances by the show's three leading ladies, The Larry Keeton Theatre's production of Sweet Charity, that 1966 musical theater oddity that spawned two of pop music's favorite showtunes-"If My Friends Could See Me Now" and "Hey, Big Spender"-lacks the polish and pizzazz expected from a theatre company known for its top-flight musical revivals.

Lisa Marie Wright's impeccable timing and on-target comic performance-not to mention her cantilevered breastworks-are reason enough to book your favorite table at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre for Spreading It Around, a formulaic comedy about seniors spending their kids' inheritances that actually packs in a lot of laughs while pulling a minimum of punches in its two hours onstage.

For Tennessee theater audiences, this weekend presents a bounty of theatrical riches, with six shows opening: Blackbird Theatre's Red, Sideshow's Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre's Spreading it Around, Boiler Room Theatre's Parade, Tennessee Women's Theater Project's Shooting Star and Street Theatre Company's latest incarnation of Macabaret.

Nine-time First Night Award-winner Martha Wilkinson directs Derek Whittaker, Debbie Kraski and a cast of Nashville's stage favorites in the Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre production of Fiddler on the Roof, opening Thursday, May 31, and running through July 8 at the theater in West Nashville.

Just when you thought it was safe to go to the theater once again, we welcome you to the debut installment of Music City Confidential, all the news that's fit to print (or not-depending on your perspective) from Nashville's ever-growing, ever-fascinating (okay, so we obviously don't have enough to occupy ourselves) live theater industry (we're trying that out-does it work? Let us know, theaterati!) Here amid the florid prose and flowery praise, you'll find all the stories that don't quite fit elsewhere, some of 'em kind of gossipy, some of 'em stone-cold serious, some of 'em just lists of names you need to know. You'll also find photos from our new "Intermission@" series, details about the latest cast parties and various and sundry minutiae-the veritable flotsam and jetsam-from backstage, onstage, offstage and beyond…