Paul J.Cook News

Coming between Lips Together, Teeth Apart and Love! Valour! Compassion! in the canon of Terrence McNally's works, A Perfect Ganesh - despite its Pulitzer Prize nomination - remains relatively unknown, seldom produced and somewhat unappreciated by theater audiences. But if you share an appreciation for McNally's unique and contemporary world-view, you would be well-advised to take in Rhubarb Theater Company's impassioned revival of the play, now onstage at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater through April 23.

Trish Crist and Jaime Janiszewski should be artist's models: Crist, tall and titian-tressed, has a visage of timeless, classic beauty - she easily could have been the inspiration for all those towering statues of womanhood signifying liberty, freedom and all manner of other lofty aspirations. Janiszewski, softer and curvier, with an open face that always seems like it is about to break into an all-the-world-encompassing smile, could easily have posed for all of the world's great portrait painters of past and future centuries.

Laura Thomas Sonn and Tyson Laemmel are two of the most talented, engaging, charming and capable musical theater stars to be found in Nashville and they bring such joy and life to their characters in The Wedding Singer that it's easy to overlook the problems with the show. Now onstage in a buoyant production from Circle Players, directed with style by Paul J. Cook, The Wedding Singer is only one of the latest examples in the current trend of movies made into stage musicals - and that's one trend I am so ready to be over.

Mining the depths and heights of their own life experiences to bring to life onstage a plethora of challening and compelling characters, dramatic actresses in Nashville were at the pinnacle of their talents in 2010. Thoroughly captivating their audiences night after night, they put their tremendous talents on display with no-holds-barred performances that have raised the bar for actresses who follow in their wake in the coming seasons. And these ten women gave what we considered to be the most noteworthy performances of the 2010 season...

Jason Robert Brown's musical about a young Jewish boy making the move from New York to Indiana, 13, is among the highlights of Circle Players' 61st Season as one of Tennessee's oldest community theatre companies. Circle board president Jim Manning made the announcement of the new season's offerings prior to curtain of the 60th Season's To Kill a Mockingbird last week.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee's scathing evisceration of marriage and indictment of suburban morality - is brought to the Nashville stage once again in a superbly acted and confidently directed production from Artists Cooperative Theatre 1 (ACT 1). First staged by ACT 1 in its 1989-90 season in a critically-lauded staging directed by Peg Allen and headed by a cast that included A. Sean O'Connell, it is revived now as part of the company's 20th anniversary season, once again proving the power of Albee's exquisitely created words and plot and the frankly horrifying characters whose lives play out onstage.

If J. Dietz Osborne has seemed a bit distracted lately, it's easy to understand why. Within the past couple of months, he has directed Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, now onstage at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, been putting the finishing touches on Southern Fried Funeral (which will have its world premiere production by Franklin's Bethlehem Players starting Friday, March 12) with his writing partner Nate Eppler, and he's been cast as movie director Victor Fleming in Frankly, My Dear (opening March 18 at Chaffin's Barn).

Amanda Lamb gives such a stunningly real performance as the heroine in Neil Labute's Fat Pig - now onstage at Nashville's Darkhorse Theatre in a well-paced and sensitively directed production from Paul J. Cook for GroundWorks Theatre - that it's hard not to confuse the actress and her character or to know where one ends and the other begins.

Amanda Lamb, most recently seen in Sanders Family Christmas at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, stars as Helen, with Michael Coursey (Fiddler on the Roof and La Traviata in New Orleans) as Tom. Wilhelm Peters (Boiler Room Theatre's Picasso at the Lapin Agile) and Lauren Atkins (Circle Players' Titanic, Nashville Dinner Theatre's Swing) round out the cast. Paul J. Cook (Street Theatre Company's Tuesdays With Morrie) directs.

Amanda Lamb, most recently seen in Sanders Family Christmas at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, stars as Helen, with Michael Coursey (Fiddler on the Roof and La Traviata in New Orleans) as Tom. Wilhelm Peters (Boiler Room Theatre's Picasso at the Lapin Agile) and Lauren Atkins (Circle Players' Titanic, Nashville Dinner Theatre's Swing) round out the cast. Paul J. Cook (Street Theatre Company's Tuesdays With Morrie) directs.