David Ridley News

Casting details are announced for Europeana, Peer Gynt and Blindness and Seeing, three productions that are part of PROJEKT EUROPA, a season of work at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, exploring, celebrating and interrogating our relationship with Europe.

The Bard of Avon's enduring masterpiece of love and conflict is coming to the corner of Franklin and First in Historic Downtown Clarksville this fall.

Street Theatre Company has been on a bit of a roll in 2019 a?' there's been a spate of terrific shows, the move into an impressive new space on Elm Hill Pike that will allow the company to grow, and they've continued the legacy created by company founders by continuing to push the envelope in ways creative and exhilarating a?' and theater-goers need no better proof of this than with their Halloween Season offering of The Toxic Avenger, which proves that entertaining musicals don't need huge casts or technical wizardry to be utterly delightful.  

Clarksville's oldest professional theatre is high-stepping into Season 37 of live entertainment on the corner of Franklin and First in Historic Downtown Clarksville with a stunning concept musical capturing the spirit and tension of a Broadway chorus audition.

Any directors planning new productions of Hair - wherever they may be all over this colorful country in which we live - might be advised to follow the lead of Clarksville's Roxy Regional Theatre and cast Mike Kinzer and Ryan Bowie as Berger and Claude, a pair of actorscharacters who together define the term "sheer perfection." Backed up by an ensemble of passionate, totally committed actors who bring "The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" to life, Kinzer and Bowie are ideally suited to their roles and the production in which they star is by far the best we've seen at the Roxy in many a moon.

This summer, join the tribe of the Age of Aquarius and celebrate the sixties counterculture in all its barefoot, long-haired, bell-bottomed, beaded and fringed glory at the corner of Franklin and First in Historic Downtown Clarksville.

Birth; marriage; death. And everything in between. As day breaks on another ordinary day, the townsfolk of Grover's Corners go about their business: newspapers are delivered; people go to work; gardens are tended to. And a boy and girl fall in love. But as life's events unfold and a community comes together, one question remains: 'do any human beings ever realise life as they live it? Every, every minute?'

Regent's Park Open Air Theatre have today confirmed the full Creative Team behind Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Our Town. Launching their 2019 season on 16 May, designer Rosie Elnile joins the already announced director, Ellen McDougall. Also confirmed are Sasha Milavic Davies (Movement Director), Orlando Gough (Composer), Lizzie Powell (Lighting Designer), Tom Gibbons (Sound Designer) and David Ridley (Musical Director). Casting is by Jacob Sparrow and Barbara Houseman is Season Associate Director (Voice and Text).

Crafting a musical theater hit is a lot like alchemy - the ancient study focused primarily on creating gold from baser elements - and oftentimes no matter the ingredients, directors never quite achieve the outcome for which they strive. But in the case of director/choreographer Everett Tarlton's production of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate (now onstage at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre through March 7), he has crafted something so special that it essentially defines the theatrical gold standard.

This Christmas, instead of merely treading the boards at Tobacco Factory Theatres, the actors are treading in between the boards in a delightful adaptation of Mary Norton's The Borrowers, a story about a family of tiny people, no bigger than a crayon.

Throughout the past year, I've written quite often about Nashville's Chase Miller and his tremendous talents, remarkable stage presence and startling ability to successfully morph from one character to another completely unlike the first (or any to follow). Miller is rather insanely talented and any director worth her or his salt would be deliriously happy to have the serious triple threat in any show on their drawing board.

Michael Grandage today announces the recipients of the third annual MGCfutures Bursaries awarded across a range of theatrical disciplines including directing, writing, producing, designing, composing, choreography and performance makers. Offering both financial and ongoing mentoring support from the MGCfutures team, the recipients come from across the UK.

Looking into the future, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for October 15, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...

Looking into the future, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for October 1, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...

Looking into the future, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar for October 1, 2018, to help you plot your course through the end of the year...

Looking into the future, you'll find a number of new productions on tap for your entertainment pleasure, thanks to the efforts of theater companies all over Middle Tennessee. Here's our calendar to help you plot your course...

For plenty of fast-paced action, along with some stellar performances by a fresh-faced cast of eager young theatrical triple threats and a coterie of Nashville stage favorites, one need look no further than Disney's Newsies, the latest onstage offering from Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, the iconic Music City venue that's been entertaining audiences for more than half a century. In its way, The Barn (as it is affectionately known in these parts) and its laudable history ensure that its treatment of the popular musical theater title lend the show's historical basis more than a little gravitas in the making of a stage spectacle.

Today, The Thursday Five(+1) shines the spotlight on four members of the Chaffin's Barn cast of Newsies - David Ridley, Samantha Blake, Natalie Rankin and Kayla Petrille - who took time out from their rigorous regimen of rehearsals to tell our readers more about themselves and to offer their own suggestions for why you should come see their show, which runs through October 22.

Nashville's iconic Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre is back and better than ever! After some six months - and 50 or more years since its debut - the newly renovated and gorgeously appointed Chaffin's Barn has reopened with a rousing production of Sister Act, the habit-forming musical that played to sold-out audiences last summer.

The selection of The Threepenny Opera to inaugurate Street's 2018 season is one of the year's most eagerly anticipated theatrical events in Music City - thanks in part to the fact that it may well be the first home-grown staging of Brecht and Weill's parody of operetta that, in turn, skewers capitalistic society while touting socialist, even Troskyite, values in the guise of a rather farcical music hall diversion. Does it succeed? The answer is 'yes,' perhaps even an emphatic 'YES!' although one must pay close attention to the lyrics for the punch of the political set amidst a story that, on the surface, seems somewhat apolitical in tone, style and nature.