Alyssa V. Gomez News

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 a community theater. Now, serving as a training ground for some of the very best of musical theater stars-to-come, The Roxy has more than come into its own, continuing to push the envelope, to challenge audiences to expand their artistic purview and to create theater that is as compelling as any you'll find on a stage anywhere in the good ol' US of A.

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.

They're dishing up some tasty Rumors at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre - along with the bountiful buffet of Southern delicacies - while at Donelson's The Larry Keeton Theatre, the last two performances of Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest are served up this weekend, and the national touring company of Mamma Mia! winds up its weeklong stand at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall. And the intrepid Nashville Repertory Theatre Professional Interns present their very own production of Gruesome Playground Injuries.

Roxy Regional Theater, in a multimedia partnership with CDE Lightband, will combine the music from a multi-platinum album turned into one of the most notable Broadway musicals of recent vintage, brought to life via the creativity of artists from Austin Peay State University and a dozen high-energy performers from around the USA for an eagerly anticipated production of Green Day's American Idiot, opening April 29 in Clarksville.

Combine a multi-platinum album and a multimedia partnership with CDE Lightband with a multi-talented group of artists from Austin Peay State University and a dozen high-energy performers from around the nation - and brace yourself for a two-time Tony and Grammy Award-winning blockbuster.

Roxy Regional Theater, in a multimedia partnership with CDE Lightband, will combine the music from a multi-platinum album turned into one of the most notable Broadway musicals of recent vintage, brought to life via the creativity of artists from Austin Peay State University and a dozen high-energy performers from around the USA for an eagerly anticipated production of Green Day's American Idiot, opening April 29 in Clarksville.

Tony-winning musical brings a breath of fresh air to dinner theatre patrons.

In The Heights is not standard Maryland dinner theater fare, concerning, as it does, the residents of a largely Dominican and Puerto Rican barrio at the northern end (and highest part) of Manhattan. The lyrics are often in Spanish, often delivered in rap monologue, and largely assume a kind of cultural literacy not common among Maryland dinner theater patrons: knowing, for instance, what it means for someone to say she comes from La Vibora or from Vega Alta (things I had to look up after the fact) or what kind of comestible a mamey might be (ditto), or what it means to yell 'Wepa!' (ditto again). This is probably a good thing; all of us should constantly be looking to broaden our horizons, especially in our theatergoing. At the same time, as much help as possible should be extended to make the proceedings as comprehensible as possible for us Anglo newbies. And sadly, barring a half-page insert of explanation in the program, that kind of help was in scant evidence in Toby's new production.