Weslie Webster News

Tennessee's best and brightest theatrical stars will take to the stage of the Boiler Room Theatre -to celebrate The Tony Awards during First Night: The Tony Concert, presented by Keeping Scores Concerts on Monday, June 6 - and to perform an evening of songs from Broadway musicals that have won the Tony Award for best musical.

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.

Tennessee's best and brightest theatrical stars will take to the stage of the Boiler Room Theatre -to celebrate The Tony Awards during First Night: The Tony Concert, presented by Keeping Scores Concerts on Monday, June 6 - and to perform an evening of songs from Broadway musicals that have won the Tony Award for best musical.

Old-fashioned and sweetly sentimental, The Silver Whistle is a gentle theatrical comedy about a group of downtrodden senior citizens during the Great Depression who are yearning to find something to lift them out of their own collective doldrums and allow them to once again be vital, productive human beings. Luckily, for this particular group of seniors - all of whom live in the 'old people's home' of the Church of John in some unnamed American city - their ho-hum existence is upended by the unexpected arrival of Oliver T. Erwenter, a fast-talking, silver-tongued huckster, who may have discovered the Fountain of Youth.

'There are no small parts, only small actors,' goes the old theatrical saw that's tossed about willy-nilly to encourage budding thespians to take on roles they suspect might be beneath them and their lofty stature. But, of course, there's much truth to be found in the axiom and you will certainly see it brought to life in the efforts of the members of many acting ensembles, particularly those considered among the best in Nashville's 2010 theater season:

Amid threatening weather forecasts and a winter storm bearing down on the South, more than 150 hardy souls gathered to celebrate live theatre in Nashville and Middle Tennessee with the presentation of the BroadwayWorld.com Nashville Theatre Awards and First Night's Top Ten of Twenty-Ten on Sunday night, January 9. Street Theatre Company's new venue at 1933 Elm Hill Pike was the setting for the event that featured performances by Joann Coleman, Ben Van Diepen, Ann Street Kavanaugh, Laura Matula, Michael Kitts and Bakari Jamal King.

Forget the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or schlepping to the mall to shop 'til you drop on Black Friday, the best - and definitely the most joyous - way to welcome the holiday season is a trip to Crossville for Cumberland County Playhouse's gloriously rapturous production of She Loves Me, the lovely and lyrical musical from Joe Masteroff, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick.

When the show finally ended on Sunday night, September 19, and First Night revelers made it to their cars, they headed downtown to Hard Rock Cafe Nashville, located at the corner of Broadway and First, for the After-Party. Although the show ran long (as awards presentations tend to do) at four hours, a hale and hearty crowd of theater-types partied until the early morning hours of Monday, September 20 in the Reverb Room and on the rooftop balcony overlooking the glittery Nashville downtown and the Cumberland River with the soaring Nashville skyline in the background.