Lauren Marshall News

The Nutty Professor's Marissa McGowan, Caroline or Change's Dalton Tilghman and Kirk-Burgess Productions' debut production of Mysterious Skin claimed top honors Sunday night as winners of the BWW Nashville Theatre Awards were announced.

Out Front on Main, Inc., Murfreesboro's cutting-edge theater company, and Cumberland County Playhouse, Crossville's venerable theater that has been delighting audiences since the 1960s, were among the top winners in the BroadwayWorld.com Tennessee Theatre Awards, announced Sunday night.

The world premiere of a brand-spanking new musical with Broadway in its sights, a relatively young but awe-inspiring theater company and a sparkling, witty new play about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald led the list of Tennessee's outstanding theatrical achievements in 2012 that was revealed Sunday night at Midwinter's First Night.

Carol Irvin, who has been a mainstay at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse for more than 20 years, is the latest recipient of The First Night Robe,presented on Saturday, November 17, prior to curtain of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Earlier in the same week, Bralyn Stokes received the robe at Rhubarb Theater's Birds in Church, and Michael Holder and Josh Waldrep claimed it at Street Theatre Company's Miss Saigon in Concert.

Tall, blond and handsome-and looking for all the world like some sort of biblical superhero-Colin Cahill may be the ideal Joseph, given the sumptuous and fast paced production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat at Cumberland County Playhouse. Cahill charms and entertains as Jacob's favorite son, surrounded by what seems like a cast of thousands, bringing Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical to life with enough energy to power every household along the Cumberland Plateau.

Curtain's up on Cumberland County Playhouse's 15th annual presentation of A Sanders Family Christmas-the holiday-flavored sequel to the enormously popular Smoke on the Mountain-a down-home musical filled with faith, family and old-fashioned fun and starring a cast of Playhouse favorites.

Austin Price and Horace Smith star as Cumberland County Playhouse brings one of the most popular-and most frequently requested-titles its almost 50-year history back to the with an exciting new production of Big River, directed by BWW Nashville Theatre Awards winner Britt Hancock. Big River runs through November 2 in Crossville.

Back in the day-1907, actually-when John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World premiered at Dublin's Abbey Theater, it apparently caused riots, its tale of an apparent patricide engendering great public outrage and overt hostilities. Four years later, when the play debuted in New York City, audience members hurled epithets, rotten tomatoes and various other vegetation across the footlights, protesting the play's perceived "immorality."

Yankees might find the idea crazy to turn a classic Irish play into a bluegrass musical set in the Virginia Mountains, but Southerners know that the Blue Ridge Mountains were settled by Scots-Irish folks-and that a fiddle is a fiddle all over the globe. So it should come as no surprise that John Fionte, Cumberland County Playhouse's New Works Director-who describes himself as a Boston Yankee in the Cumberlands-was a bit skeptical when he first heard the premise of Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge, the new musical that opens in Crossville on Thursday, August 23.

We've been doing our part to prepare ye the way, watching the action onstage, taking some furtive peeks backstage, listening to all the offstage gossip and venturing beyond the confines of the theater to gain the informed knowledge to see more shows in the Volunteer State than you ever thought possible. So, good people of the theaterati, read on and get all the information you need to know in this, our latest installment of Music City Confidential. This is #6…

But The Music Man? Come on, the classic Meredith Willson musical chestnut is as corny and all-American as you can possibly get (let's face it, Willson is the master of that particular genre of musical theater occupied by The Music Man and The Unsinkable Molly Brown-plus he wrote the Oscar-nominated score for William Wyler's The Little Foxes, which is one of my all-time favorite movies: "The grits didn't hold they heat"), it's pure hokum and there is absolutely nothing at all cynical about it. So why the heck does it make me respond with some emotional fervor?

Today's spotlight hones in on a supremely talented trio of individuals from Cumberland County Playhouse in Crossville. The altogether amazingly talented Ron Murphy is the company's resident music director (who truly has his work cut out for him since musicals are the stock in trade at CCP), the beautiful and vibrant Lindy Pendzick (who we first saw onstage in Brigadoon and most recently as Maria in The Sound of Music-and she stars opposite her husband Greg Pendzick in the nostalgic comedy See Rock City) and the versatile and charming Michael Ruff (whose burgeoning resume includes starmaking turns in Duck Hunter Shoots Angel, Dreamgirls, Brigadoon and, most recently, as Hoke in Driving Miss Daisy, opposite Carol Irvin and Daniel W. Black).

Weslie Webster and Ron Murphy will combine efforts once again to bring a special benefit cabaret for the Shanks Center for the Arts-Art Isn't Easy, set for Saturday, April 28-featuring some of Cumberland County Playhouse's finest performers for an evening of music, dance and more. Art Isn't Easy: A Celebration of the Joys and Challenges of the Creative Life (the cabaret's title is taken from a lyric in the score of Stephen Sondheim's 1983 musical Sunday in the Park With George) will feature such Playhouse favorites Daniel Black, Lauren Marshall Murphy, Leila Nelson, Lindy Pendzick, Greg Pendzick, Austin Price, Michael Ruff and more.

Weslie Webster and Ron Murphy will combine efforts once again to bring a special benefit cabaret for the Shanks Center for the Arts-Art Isn't Easy, set for Saturday, April 28-featuring some of Cumberland County Playhouse's finest performers for an evening of music, dance and more. Art Isn't Easy: A Celebration of the Joys and Challenges of the Creative Life (the cabaret's title is taken from a lyric in the score of Stephen Sondheim's 1983 musical Sunday in the Park With George) will feature such Playhouse favorites Daniel Black, Lauren Marshall Murphy, Leila Nelson, Lindy Pendzick, Greg Pendzick, Austin Price, Michael Ruff and more.

Weslie Webster and Ron Murphy combine efforts once again to bring a special benefit cabaret for the Shanks Center for the Arts-Art Isn't Easy, set for tonight, April 28-featuring some of Cumberland County Playhouse's finest performers for an evening of music, dance and more.

Weslie Webster and Ron Murphy will combine efforts once again to bring a special benefit cabaret for the Shanks Center for the Arts-Art Isn't Easy, set for Saturday, April 28-featuring some of Cumberland County Playhouse's finest performers for an evening of music, dance and more.

With several Tennessee theaters prepping new productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic The Sound of Music over the upcoming months, one would be well-advised to make the trip to Crossville to see director Weslie Webster's (and music director Ron Murphy's) take on the Von Trapp family musical. Webster, one of Cumberland County Playhouse's most accomplished leading ladies, takes the helm of The Sound of Music with clear-headed confidence and commitment, giving the time-honored musical the added gravitas-the dramatic heft-of historical context, which all too often is glossed over and regretfully forgotten in lesser revivals.

The Sound Of Music returns to Crossville on February 10, as the Cumberland County Playhouse revives the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical directed by Weslie Webster, with musical direction by Ron Murphy, and starring Lindy Pendzick (named to First Nights Top 11 of 2011 for her performance in Little Shop Of Horrors) starring in the role of Maria.

The Sound Of Music returns to Crossville on February 10, as the Cumberland County Playhouse revives the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical directed by Weslie Webster, with musical direction by Ron Murphy, and starring Lindy Pendzick (named to First Nights Top 11 of 2011 for her performance in Little Shop Of Horrors) starring in the role of Maria.

The Sanders Family of Smoke on the Mountain trilogy fame returns to Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse November 18 for their 12th season of A Sanders Family Christmas, taking audiences back to Mt Pleasant Baptist Church to celebrate Christmas 1941, just weeks after Pearl Harbor, for their final Saturday night singing before Dennis reports for basic training. The Sanders Family will share songs and testimonies; all the while Preacher Oglethorpe continues his pursuit of June (played by CCP favorites Jason Ross and Patty Payne).