Jeffrey Ellis - Page 126

To see Erin Spencer dance is to fall a little bit in love with her. Talented and determined, ambitious and creative...she's kind of a force of nature. One of the growing number of dancers in the Nashville area who focus on theatrical performances - she has a heady resume of performance with several theater companies here - she's gaining a much-deserved reputation as an exceptional performer with an amazing work ethic.

Feasting on the banquet that is the musical, magical prose of Tom Stoppard, the cast of Blackbird Theater Company's Arcadia delivers a pitch-perfect rendering of his intellectually stimulating play, under the fine direction of Ted Swindley. Certain to provoke thought and elicit a variety of responses, Arcadia is intricately crafted and imaginatively plotted, staged elegantly and confidently by the relatively new theater company in just its second production at David Lipscomb University's Shamblin Theatre.

In what could well be the most talked-about theatrical event of the new year, Street Theatre Company presents Chess in Concert February 24-27, featuring some of Nashville's best known stage talents and including a chorus of more than 40 voices. And it seems, in talking to some of the artists most intimately involved in the creative process that will culminate in this weekend's five performances, that it is a process they'd definitely sign-up for again - and it's clear that Nashville audiences will be talking about it for a long time after the curtain rings down Sunday night.

Spring Awakening, the eight-time Tony Award winning Broadway musical - featuring 'the most gorgeous Broadway score this decade,' according to Entertainment Weekly - comes to Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center for the last time on February 27.

Nashville's Studio Tenn theatre company concludes its inaugural season with Tennessee Williams' classic play The Glass Menagerie, closing February 27 at Belmont University's Black Box Theatre. Williams' play is an award-winning portrayal of a disintegrating family during the depression and is the play that introduced him as one of the preeminent American Playwrights of the 20th century.

Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, a magical tale based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, continues Actors Bridge Ensemble's 2010-11 season, running February 18-27 at Belmont University's Troutt Theater. Directed by Jessika Malone, in Ruhl's critically acclaimed play, 'Eurydice is to marry her true love, a misstep sends her to the surreal depths of the Underworld, where she has a surprising reunion and ultimately must decide whether to follow Orpheus back to the land of the living.'

After much too long, Spring Awakening - the eight-time Tony Award-winning musical about teen angst and sexual awakening in late-19th century Germany - finally made its Nashville debut Friday, February 25, settling into Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall for a five-performance run. And though the show was a long time in coming to Music City, the audience watched raptly as the fresh-faced cast of talented young actors brought the story to life with vigor and total commitment.

Make no mistake about it: Street Theatre Company's Chess in Concert is filled to overflowing with an embarrassment of riches. If for no other reason, you should see the concert (onstage through Sunday, February 27) for Laura Matula's bravura performance as Florence Vassy - the American chess champion's second who falls into a torrid affair with his Russian counterpart - which is as stunning as any star turn you will see by any woman in musical theater anywhere. (There. I've said it and I mean it with all my heart: Laura Matula has a spectacularly expressive voice and her dramatic performance in this role is richly shaded and nuanced. In short, she should be a very big star!)

Holly Allen and Jeremy Childs lead the cast of Tennessee Women's Theater Project's production of Michael Jacobs' Impressionism, opening Friday, February 25 and running for 13 performances at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theater. TWTP's production marks the regional premiere of Impressionism.

It seems like Molly Breen is either always onstage or backstage - whether she's acting, rehearsing, running lines, hanging out with friends - so, if you're looking for her, it's a pretty safe guess you'll find Molly inside a theater. With an enviable resume, which includes assignments with a host of theater companies, she moves effortlessly from one production to another, taking on a wide range of roles. She's equally at home onstage, in front of a camera doing film work or commercials, appearing in music videos and, generally, pursuing her dream of being an actress.

Talk to cast members of Blackbird Theater Company's production of Arcadia and you get the idea that all this hard work we've heard so much about may actually be a whole lot of fun. And ask them why audiences should come see the show, which opens Friday night, February 25, at David Lipscomb University's Shamblin Theatre, and the answers you get may not be what you expect either.

For audience members wondering how the memorable, albeit short, tale can possibly be translated to musical theater, NCT producing artistic director Scot Copeland has some succinct pre-curtain advice: 'Just wait and see.' You'll be so glad you did. Its brevity notwithstanding, the story is winsomely engaging, using the text of Brown's book as a springboard to take younger audiences deeper into a wonderland of imaginative, inspirational fun - and there are some quietly expressed lessons conveyed in the process.

In what could well be the most talked-about theatrical event of the new year, Street Theatre Company presents Chess in Concert February 24-27, featuring some of Nashville's best known stage talents and including a chorus of more than 40 voices. And it seems, in talking to some of the artists most intimately involved in the creative process that will culminate in this weekend's five performances, that it is a process they'd definitely sign-up for again - and it's clear that Nashville audiences will be talking about it for a long time after the curtain rings down Sunday night.

Faith Kelm, clearly, is one of Nashville's most versatile dancers, able to take on any role and make it her own. That much was obvious the very first time I saw her onstage, playing Carmen in Circle Players' production of Fame, The Musical during the summer of 2009. She's only gotten better since then. Now in college, pursuing her education (she's a musical theater major at Pittsburgh's Point Park University) as she pursues her dreams, she still makes time for visits home, to see friends, to perform in shows and, of course, to dance.

In an exhilarating and exciting journey that was at once joyful and provocative, dazzling and erotic, the artists of Dance Theatre of Tennessee took audiences through all the differing Aspects of Love with the company's latest series - a late-arriving Valentine for lovers of the dance. Staged artfully and confidently, DTT's latest offerings demonstrate beautifully how far the company has come during its short history, firmly and exuberantly claiming its place among the most daring companies to be found.

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.

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.

Playwright Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, her vibrant and provocative re-imagining of the classic Greek myth, is one of the most poignant theatrical treatises on love and loss, grief and redemption, that you're likely to witness. Brought to the stage of Belmont University's Troutt Theatre by the luminously gifted Jessika Malone - through a collaboration between Actors Bridge Ensemble and Belmont's Department of Theatre and Dance - Eurydice is certainly one of the most technically challenging productions we've seen of late on a Nashville stage.

Dance Theatre of Tennessee presents a mid-winter series of Nashville premieres - and invites audiences to the 'hottest post-Valentine ticket in town,' according to company artistic director Christopher Mohnani - in Aspects of Love, 'a celebration of dance, music and love. Led by Mohnani, DTT presents an evening of several premieres promising 'an evening of wonderful dancing and choreography together with memorable and familiar music that will have you wanting for more.'

Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, a magical tale based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, continues Actors Bridge Ensemble's 2010-11 season, running February 18-27 at Belmont University's Troutt Theater.