Carol Irvin News

Cumberland County Playhouse's 2015 Golden Anniversary Season features stories of Tennessee, the South, and families, in new comedies and musicals by nationally recognized Tennessee playwrights and songwriters. The Playhouse continues to feature strong local talent, in both new works and great family favorites like The Wizard of Oz and the professional regional premiere of Disney and Cameron Mackintosh's Mary Poppins. Unlike movies and touring shows, attending a performance at the Playhouse keeps millions of entertainment dollars in the Tennessee economy, creating performance and production jobs and career opportunities!

First Night Award winning playwrights Dietz Osborne and Nate Eppler's Southern Fried Funeral will be featured among productions celebrating the Golden Anniversary of Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse in 2015.

Beginning September 12, Cumberland County Playhouse promises audiences a devilishly good time as they present Damn Yankees, the Tony Award-winning musical that's all about America's favorite pastime, baseball! Middle-aged Joe Boyd (Jim Crabtree) will do anything to see his beloved Washington Senators win the pennant-even sell his soul to the Devil. So when charming Mr. Applegate (Jason Ross) offers him the chance to dethrone the Yankees and lead his team to the pennant, Joe can't resist the temptation. But when transformed into the baseball sensation of the year, young Joe Hardy (Blake Graham) must decide if the life he gave up is more important than youth and fame. Only with the help of the Devil's sultry seductress Lola (Leila Nelson) does Hardy have a chance at redemption.

Starting June 13, Cumberland County Playhouse will present what just might be its most spectacular production yet, Shrek The Musical! Featuring 19 all-new songs, big laughs and amazing special effects, Shrek The Musical is part romance, part fairy tale and all fun! Based on the Oscar winning DreamWorks film, Shrek brings the hilarious story of everyone's favorite ogre to life on stage as our unlikely hero Shrek and his loyal friend Donkey set off on a quest to rescue the fiery Princess Fiona. Add a villain with a SHORT temper, a cookie with attitude and over a dozen other fairy tale misfits in an irresistible mix of adventure, laughter and romance and you've got a must-see musical comedy for all ages!

Cumberland County Playhouse starts May off with a bang as they present Irving Berlin's beloved musical Annie Get Your Gun, starring Tennessee's Miss America Kellye Cash as sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Set to one of Berlin's most famous scores, the show contains such classics as 'There's No Business Like Show Business', 'Doin' What Comes Naturally', 'You Can't Get a Man With a Gun', 'They Say It's Wonderful', 'My Defenses Are Down' and 'Anything You Can Do'.

Cumberland County Playhouse starts May off with a bang as they present Irving Berlin's beloved musical Annie Get Your Gun, starring Tennessee's Miss America Kellye Cash as sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Set to one of Berlin's most famous scores, the show contains such classics as "There's No Business Like Show Business", "Doin' What Comes Naturally", "You Can't Get a Man With a Gun", "They Say It's Wonderful", "My Defenses Are Down" and "Anything You Can Do".

It's the most requested title - and the most popular production - in Playhouse history, and February 28 through May 22, Cumberland County Playhouse brings The Foreigner back to the Mainstage! Since its 1983 premiere, The Foreigner has earned two Obie Awards and two Outer Critics Circle Awards as Best New American Play and Best Off-Broadway Production. In Larry Shue's hilarious farce, painfully shy Charlie Baker (Jason Ross) visits a fishing lodge in Georgia with his friend Froggy LeSeuer (Michael Ruff), a British demolitions expert who runs training sessions at a nearby army base. Terrified of actually having to converse with strangers once Froggy departs, Charlie adopts the persona of a foreigner who doesn't understand English. When the other residents of the lodge begin to speak freely around him, he not only becomes privy to secrets both frivolous and dangerous, he also discovers an adventurous extrovert within himself.

Carol Irvin, Michael Ruff and Daniel W. Black star in Cumberland County Playhouse's 48th season-opening production of Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning Driving Miss Daisy, which opens this Saturday, January 21.

The Cumberland County Playhouse production of 9 to 5: The Musical brings hilarity and joy to the stage and leaves you dancing along in your seat. But no worries about bothering your seat neighbor; chances are good they are seat-dancing right along with you.

Opening Friday, April 5, in the Adventure Theater at Cumberland County Playhouse is William Gibson's The Miracle Worker, starring Lindy Pendzick as Annie Sullivan, the gifted young teacher who brought light, words, and the world to a blind, deaf child.

Voting is now underway for the Tennessee Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January.

Voting is now underway for the Tennessee Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the live standings below.

Voting is now underway for the Tennessee Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the live standings below.

Voting is now underway for the Tennessee Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the live standings below.

Voting is now underway for the Tennessee Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the live standings below!

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.

Voting is now underway for the Tennessee Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the live standings below!

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.

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).