Megan Murphy Chambers News

Audiences in Nashville and Middle Tennessee will have a wealth of new offerings awaiting them at the theater this weekend, as companies throughout the region roll out the red carpet for the opening of no fewer than ten new productions. Ranging from the tried and true (Arthur Miller's All My Sons from Tennessee Repertory Theatre, Belmont University Theatre's Dancing at Lughnasa, Lakewood Village Theatre's A Few Good Men and Annie at Towne Centre Theatre) to edgier fare (like The Rocky Horror Show at Boiler Room Theatre and David Mamet's American Buffalo at ACT 1) and newer, less familiar works (Trying from Tennessee Women's Theater Project and the debuting Sideshow Fringe Festival, a new endeavor from Actors Bridge Ensemble that features all manner of new offerings, including a 48-hour playwriting competition from which I'll be tweeting live reviews while the shows happen on Saturday from 6 to 7 p.m.), audiences have a full slate of offerings from which to choose this weekend.

Melodie Madden Adams takes to the stage as her fictional alter ego in The Linda Lane Show: Pageants, Prayers & Pianos, presented by MAS Nashville on Monday, September 19 at The Basement. In her new one-woman cabaret show, Madden Adams takes her audience back to the 1960s to embody the fictional Linda Lane - described as 'a journey of song and storytelling' - a simple girl with a simple dream.

Melodie Madden Adams takes to the stage as her fictional alter ego in The Linda Lane Show: Pageants, Prayers & Pianos, presented by MAS Nashville on Monday, September 19 at The Basement. In her new one-woman cabaret show, Madden Adams takes her audience back to the 1960s to embody the fictional Linda Lane - described as 'a journey of song and storytelling' - a simple girl with a simple dream.

The Boiler Room Theatre (at The Factory at Franklin, 230 Franklin Rd, Bldg 6) brings the cult favorite stage show to Franklin for the first time.

Nashville theater-goers may have experienced the second coming on Monday night - what with the return of those FIVE divas with their Encore performance - and while it might not have been part of that much-discussed rapture we've heard so much about of late, they certainly responded rapturously to the entertainment provided by the quintet of versatile triple threats.

Nashville's show-stopping quintet of captivating, sexy, sultry, uber-talented women of FIVE - known among the intelligentsia as Melodie Madden Adams, Megan Murphy Chambers, Cori Laemmel, Laura Matula and Erin Parker - reclaim the stage Monday, June 27, with Five: An Encore Performance, building on the momentum that started in March with their debut performance at Street Theatre Company.

The quintet of captivating, sexy, sultry, uber talented women of FIVE return to the stage on Monday, June 27, with Five: An Encore Performance, hot on the heels of their near-legendary debut performance in March, this time presented onstage at Nashville's historic Belcourt Theatre in Hillsboro Village.

Joel Drake Johnson's The Fall to Earth is an atypical, darkly comic - yet at the same time very serious - take on the conventional mother/daughter tale. Now presented in an exceptional new production from Nashville's GroundWorks Theatre, The Fall to Earth stars an extraordinary trio of actresses who bring the disquieting story to life with a sense of camaraderie and trust, delivering as they do a truly compelling experience for theater-goers.

After much too long an absence, 2010 First Night Honoree A. Sean O'Connell finds herself in the director's chair again, this time helming the latest production from Nashville's GroundWorks Theatre - the regional premiere of Joel Drake Johnson's The Fall to Earth.

After much too long an absence, 2010 First Night Honoree A. Sean O'Connell finds herself in the director's chair again, this time helming the latest production from Nashville's GroundWorks Theatre - the regional premiere of Joel Drake Johnson's The Fall to Earth.

After much too long an absence, 2010 First Night Honoree A. Sean O'Connell finds herself in the director's chair again, this time helming the latest production from Nashville's GroundWorks Theatre - the regional premiere of Joel Drake Johnson's The Fall to Earth.

After much too long an absence, 2010 First Night Honoree A. Sean O'Connell finds herself in the director's chair again, this time helming the latest production from Nashville's GroundWorks Theatre - the regional premiere of Joel Drake Johnson's The Fall to Earth.

In the upcoming concert version of Funny Girl, set for April 29-May 1 at Franklin's Boiler Room Theatre, director Scott Logsdon has cast 12 very different, very funny and somehow uniquely qualified women to take on the iconic role of Fanny Brice, first brought to national, then worldwide, acclaim by the inimitable Barbra Streisand. We're giving you a chance to get to know all of Nashville's Funny Fannys, one by one, and today we were forced to sit down with Laura Thomas Sonn, the very personification of diva - as everyone in town knows, she's so demanding and rude (that gracious, kind and sweet act is just that: an act! I have the bruises from the phone she threw at me when last I saw her - and she was onstage at the time and I was in the audience, but didn't have my eyes cast downward when she looked in my direction) and not at all one of the most beautiful women you've ever seen! (I bet that'll get those Fannys in an uproar, just in time for our final two interviews this week). So, read on, gentle readers...oh, yes, she is most definitely my favorite. Well, today.

Nashville theatre-goers are a pretty lucky lot, with a great deal to be thankful for actually, what with the wealth of talent you can find in our little burg. We may be known around the world as Music City USA, but those of us in the know can rightfully and justifiably attest to the fact that you could refer to us just easily as 'Theater City USA.' Certainly, you'd be hard-pressed to find any city around the globe with more musical talent than you'll find in Nashville, which means, of course, that musical theater here is really good - even when it's bad (and do you really need me to list examples? I think not, but I can if called upon to do so...), it's far better than you'd find anywhere else. Nashville is packed with talented people - it's that simple.

Nashville theatre-goers are a pretty lucky lot, with a great deal to be thankful for actually, what with the wealth of talent you can find in our little burg. We may be known around the world as Music City USA, but those of us in the know can rightfully and justifiably attest to the fact that you could refer to us just easily as 'Theater City USA.' Certainly, you'd be hard-pressed to find any city around the globe with more musical talent than you'll find in Nashville, which means, of course, that musical theater here is really good - even when it's bad (and do you really need me to list examples? I think not, but I can if called upon to do so...), it's far better than you'd find anywhere else. Nashville is packed with talented people - it's that simple.

Cori Laemmel is one of those actresses you're instantly drawn to onstage: When she comes on, there's an indefinable quality about her that rivets your attention to her, regardless of the role she's playing. Offstage? Well, you find yourself in that same, almost indefinable, realm of being unable to stop watching her: She's charming, as sweet and disingenuous as anyone could possibly be, funny and slightly goofy - and absolutely, completely, no-doubt-about it a star-in-the-making. Seriously, she's got mad talent and remarkable skill. The fact that she is pursuing her theatrical dreams in Nashville is just so much luck for those of us fortunate enough to revel in the spectacle that is she.

So far as I can tell, the best way to handle the situation - on Monday night, March 28, five of Nashville's most talented young divas aka Cori Laemmel, Erin Parker, Laura Matula, Megan Murphy Chambers and Melodie Madden Adams will be performing a cabaret entitled FIVE - is to send five other young divas (I'd suggest sequestering Laura Thomas Sonn, Heather Trabucco, Stacie Riggs, Jennifer Richmond and Erica Haines Cantrell, just off the top of my head) to an undisclosed location - there's got to be a bunker around here somewhere, what with Oak Ridge so close by - just in case someone drops a bomb on Street Theatre Company

FIVE features the talents of Erin Parker, Melodie Madden Adams, Megan Murphy Chambers, Cori Laemmel and Laura Matula. Born as the brainchild of Parker, FIVE is the culmination of her desire to showcase local Nashville talent and creativity and grew from her aims at putting on her own one-woman show.

Funny Girl, the classic 1964 Broadway musical that helped cement Barbra Streisand's place in theatrical history, will be the first show featured in Keeping Scores, a new series of Broadway musicals in concert, to be presented at Franklin's Boiler Room Theatre. Concerts in the series will be directed by Scott Logsdon (writer/director of the recent staged reading of An American Country Christmas Carol at the Boiler Room) with music direction by Jamey Green, a co-founder of BRT, and will be produced by Sondra Morton, director of operations for the professional theater located at The Factory in Franklin.