"If he weren't such a superb musician, Peter Nero might be easy to dismiss as a mere great entertainer" (Philadelphia Inquirer). Harris Center at Folsom Lake College welcomes the legendary Peter Nero to Stage One for two separate programs over two nights with bassist Michael Barnett. Hailed as one of the premier interpreters of Gershwin, will perform The Gershwin Project, and Classic Connections, an evening dedicated to showing how jazz and classical standards are more closely related than people might think.
Let's start at the very beginning... the award-winning North Shore Music Theatre (NSMT) is alive with THE SOUND OF MUSIC as the treasured musical takes the stage for the first time since 1989, now playing through Sunday, June 23. BroadwayWorld has a first look below!
Let's start at the very beginning... the award-winning North Shore Music Theatre (NSMT) is alive with THE SOUND OF MUSIC as the treasured musical takes the stage for the first time since 1989. Opening tonight, June 11 and playing through Sunday, June 23.
Let's start at the very beginning… the award-winning North Shore Music Theatre (NSMT) is alive with THE SOUND OF MUSIC as the treasured musical takes the stage for the first time since 1989. Opening Tuesday, June 11 and playing through Sunday, June 23.
Despite their best efforts, director Lauren Shouse and her amazingly talented cast just can't give Tracy Lett's Superior Donuts the emotional heft-the literary gravitas-that the playwright so mightily struggles for in his sitcomesque script which pales in comparison to his supposed masterpiece, August: Osage County. Clearly, it's the success of that earlier, heavily-decorated and awarded, Pulitzer Prize-winning play that most theatre companies are invoking as they attempt to sell tickets to this decidedly lesser work, hoping to capitalize on its success in hoodwinking an unsuspecting audience.
Directed by David Alford, who certainly knows his way around the breakroom (what with his own experiences playing Crumpet the elf, Sedaris' velvet smock/candy can tights-wearing doppelganger), The Santaland Diaries is the perfect seasonal antidote for the countless, treacly-sweet productions of A Christmas Carol that will dominate the Nashville theatrical landscape over the coming weeks.
HBO Documentary Films heats up the summer with provocative and compelling films every Monday night, kicking off a new 11-week series MONDAY, JUNE 6 at 9:00 pm. (ET/PT). From a portrait of maverick chess genius Bobby Fischer to a gripping undercover visit to a Manhattan sex crimes unit, from the story of feminist icon Gloria Steinem to a road trip to meet newly naturalized U.S. citizens, HBO documentaries take subscribers to worlds others rarely see. This year's summer series features the work of a wide a range of directors, from award winners such as Greg Barker, Liz Garbus, Lisa F. Jackson, Peter Kunhardt and Alexandra Pelosi, to exciting emerging filmmakers.
Nicole Begue Hackman is so perfectly cast as Eliza Doolittle in Lerner and Loewe classic My Fair Lady at Cumberland County Playhouse that all those other characters that people the musical may seem superfluous, despite the splendid performances of the rest of the cast. Oh, certainly, their characters aren't really extraneous, but Hackman's portrayal of the Cockney flower girl is so spot-on, so multi-dimensional and delightful - and she sings the role so exquisitely - that you may just find yourself aching to attend the races at Ascot or to hear your favorite opera Aida at Covent Garden when you are transported by onstage magic to 1912 England.
HBO Documentary Films heats up the summer with provocative and compelling films every Monday night, kicking off a new 11-week series MONDAY, JUNE 6 at 9:00 pm. (ET/PT). From a portrait of maverick chess genius Bobby Fischer to a gripping undercover visit to a Manhattan sex crimes unit, from the story of feminist icon Gloria Steinem to a road trip to meet newly naturalized U.S. citizens, HBO documentaries take subscribers to worlds others rarely see. This year's summer series features the work of a wide a range of directors, from award winners such as Greg Barker, Liz Garbus, Lisa F. Jackson, Peter Kunhardt and Alexandra Pelosi, to exciting emerging filmmakers.
HBO Documentary Films heats up the summer with provocative and compelling films every Monday night, kicking off a new 11-week series MONDAY, JUNE 6 at 9:00 pm. (ET/PT). From a portrait of maverick chess genius Bobby Fischer to a gripping undercover visit to a Manhattan sex crimes unit, from the story of feminist icon Gloria Steinem to a road trip to meet newly naturalized U.S. citizens, HBO documentaries take subscribers to worlds others rarely see. This year's summer series features the work of a wide a range of directors, from award winners such as Greg Barker, Liz Garbus, Lisa F. Jackson, Peter Kunhardt and Alexandra Pelosi, to exciting emerging filmmakers.
There is an embarrassment of riches on display in Tennessee Repertory Theatre's production of The 39 Steps - not the least of which is the cumulative effort of four of Nashville's finest actors showing off everything in their estimable bag of tricks to bring this enormously entertaining play to life. Add to those efforts another stunning set by Gary Hoff, Trish Clark's period-perfect costumes, Michael Barnett's gorgeous lighting and Paul Carrol Binkley's stellar sound design and you clearly have one of the season's most successful offerings, technically and artistically delivered.
In Yankee Tavern, playwright Steven Dietz has created the perfect onstage mystery for the times in which we live, challenging us to consider our most closely held beliefs while reiterating our most pervasive fears. Now onstage in a richly compelling production directed by Tennessee Repertory Theatre's Rene Dunshee Copeland, Yankee Tavern transforms TPAC's Andrew Johnson Theatre into a petri dish filled with conspiracy theories and ghost stories.
But three other individuals are perhaps most responsible for the overall delight that is Tennessee Rep's 25th Anniversary season production: director Rene Dunshee Copeland, whose imaginative work helps to re-invent this musical on a basis that is at once more intimate while, somehow, is on a grander scale; music director Paul Carrol Binkley, whose concept for performing the work's music gives it the ideal down-home feel that only a band of expert Nashville players can give it; and design genius Gary Hoff, who transforms Johnson's black box space into something we've never seen in that venue before - the proscenium theatre you've only seen in your mind's eye - and who, in so doing, elevates Nashville theatrical design beyond its previous limits, fashioning it into something of opulently epic proportions.
Tennessee Rep's A Christmas Story may be as good as it gets this holiday season. Wrapped up in a spectacularly designed package by Gary Hoff and featuring the cleverly imaginative direction of Rene Dunshee Copeland, it's the one Christmas gift you owe yourself this year. And it's a surefire way to lift your spirits and make you forget all the bad news that inundates your everyday life.
