Jeffrey Ellis - Page 11

Directed with his signature creative flair, boundless imagination and penchant for fun by Benji Kern, Studio Tenn's interim artistic director, Mamma Mia! features a stellar cast of performers bringing the show to life with the expected verve and energy that the ABBA score virtually demands. Led by Erica Aubrey as Donna and Emily Urbanski as her daughter Sophie, Studio Tenn's production is vibrant, colorful and energetic, tapping into the universal appeal of the music thanks to music director/conductor Stephen Kummer and his seven member band who perform the score with consummate professionalism and more than a little Disco-era panache.

Summer of 2019 has proven to be an exciting time for theater artists, technicians and patrons in Nashville, with changes at the top of several companies' leadership teams, including Tennessee Performing Arts Center. With Kathleen O'Brien's retirement as CEO in May, TPAC has welcomed Jennifer Turner to Nashville to take the reins of the burgeoning performing arts enterprise just blocks from the Tennessee state capitol.

The Secret Garden - the Tony Award-winning musical by Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman, based upon the timeless children's novel by Knoxville's own Frances Hodgson Burnett - premieres at the Center for the Arts on Friday, August 23, continuing through Sunday, September 8, in a sumptuous production directed by longtime theater journalist Jeffrey Ellis.

Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical a?" with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin and book by Dennis Kelly a?" plays the historic Franklin Theatre through August 11, with a rollicking production helmed by Sondra Morton, featuring musical direction by Jamey Green and choreography by Everett Tarlton, who score yet another massive hit for the Franklin-based AT Pro (the professional theater arm of Act Too Players, the training program for younger actors that has proven time and again to be an important part of the Middle Tennessee theater community), featuring an all-star cast led by Thomas DeMarcus in the role of the manipulative former British hammer-throwing champion who has turned her attention to running a school for children, variously referred to as a?oenaughtya?? and a?oerevoltinga?? by their headmistress.

Powerhouse vocals from its two leading players (Anthony Lazzaro and Cassie Donegan), along with focused direction, spirited choreography, effusive music coming from the pit and an eye-popping visual design aesthetic combine to make Cumberland County Playhouse's most recent iteration of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat another in a long line of onstage hits sure to attract audiences eager to escape the sultry heat of a Tennessee summer.

Cori Anne Laemmel continues to do amazing things at The Theater Bug a?' whether it's creating new and compelling art, engaging in revealing collaborations with other creative individuals, or, more importantly, providing a safe space for a new generation of young theater artists eager to transform their own lives through self-expression a?' and there is absolutely no reason to believe that she's anywhere near a stopping point. And, because of her sincere endeavors to give back in much the same way her own life has been enriched by theater, Nashville directors may rest assured that the bench of skilled and capable actors willing (yearning!) to take to the stage for years to come is indeed very deep.

Life, as we know it, happens all around us in an amazing cavalcade of events that at once might seem inconsequential yet their importance becomes evident with time and experience. That's the message of Kodachrome, Adam Szymkowicz's lovely and elegiac play now onstage at the Actors Bridge Studio through July 28, in a warmly sentimental and sweet, yet unmistakably moving and impactful, production under the direction of Rachel Agee, who makes her professional directorial debut in the process.

Once upon a time, there was a country that only existed for one brief day and there was a man named Adam, who was determined to return to his long-lost homeland who held the key to its ephemeral history. Adam's tale a?" filled with adventure and intrigue, with larger than life-sized characters and one epic quest after another a?" provides the basis for Keith Bunin's imaginative fantasy that deftly blends comedy and drama in The World Over, now onstage through July 27 in a fanciful production (the company's ninth) from Pipeline-Collective.

If there is a more perfect pooch to portray Annie's Sandy than Rufus Stewart, then his humans should produce said canine for an upcoming production of the beloved Broadway musical post-haste. Until such time as that occurs, we are simply going to claim Rufus as the quintessential canine co-star for any number of red-headed moppets singing about "Tomorrow" while palling around with FDR, Frances Perkins, Harold Ickes and others of their political ilk.

Nashville theater has always been progressive. There have always been people and companies focused on the cutting edge, delivering productions that challenge and compel their audiences to think and to consider where they are now and where they will go in the future, and there is no question that such forward-thinking creative types will continue to wield influence in the theater community for as long as theater is to be created here, there and everywhere.

Although an over-arching consideration of evil is perhaps difficult to comprehend even three-quarters of a century after the end of World War II and beyond the scope of a stage-bound drama, playwright Kenley Smith nonetheless focuses his attention on the intertwined stories of two such villains as those captured in those wartime photos to great effect and maximum impact in Maidens, an original work given its world premiere production by Tennessee Playwrights Studio at Nashville's Darkhorse Theatre. Onstage through July 13, Maidens is as disturbing and provocative as its subject matter would indicate, brought to life with bravery and commitment by a seven-person cast under the direction of the playwright himself.

Now, through August 18, audiences at Crossville's Cumberland County Playhouse have the opportunity to fall in love with Matilda and her ragtag and inspiring band of schoolmates as they take on an adventure that is certain to delight and to engage. Directed by Jess Griffin and featuring a cast of fresh and energetic performers who bring Matilda The Musical to glorious life onstage, CCP has another resounding hit to its credit, which might be quite unlike anything that's come before it and heralds even more technical and design innovation that sets the company apart from all others in the region.

Any directors planning new productions of Hair - wherever they may be all over this colorful country in which we live - might be advised to follow the lead of Clarksville's Roxy Regional Theatre and cast Mike Kinzer and Ryan Bowie as Berger and Claude, a pair of actorscharacters who together define the term "sheer perfection." Backed up by an ensemble of passionate, totally committed actors who bring "The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" to life, Kinzer and Bowie are ideally suited to their roles and the production in which they star is by far the best we've seen at the Roxy in many a moon.

Fiddler on the Roof first debuted on Broadway in 1964 and in the intervening 55 years, it's become a beloved standard in the Broadway musical canon, being revived many times and performed on stages all over the world in productions both professional and amateur. The heartwarming tale of the world-weary dairyman Tevye, his long-suffering wife Golde, their five(!) daughters and their suitors and all of the other inhabitants of the Russian village of Anatevka has been delighting audiences ever since that initial mounting and rather than growing old and rather precious over time, Fiddler on the Roof instead has become even more relevant, particularly in the current socio-political climate in which immigrants have become political pawns and in which change is constant.

Blake Holliday's jaw-dropping performance as "international song stylist" Hedwig Schmidt is reason enough to book your tickets as soon as possible to witness the actor's transformation in a 90+ minute production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch now ensconced at Nashville's Street Theatre Company through July 6. But there's another performance which is just an impressive and just as awe-inspiring from Natalie Rankin, who transforms into Itzhak, the "husband" of Hedwig whose hangdog expression and considerable stage presence clearly rivals that of the show's eponymous star.

It should come as no surprise that Fun Home, therefore, that the aforementioned Broadway hit featuring music by Jeanine Tesori, with book and lyrics by Lisa Kron based upon Bechdel's graphic novel, is one of my favorite works in the canon of contemporary American Musical Theater. What some readers might find surprising, however, is that I fell absolutely and deeply in love with the show once over, thanks to a production from, of all places, Murfreesboro Little Theatre, where the show completes its much-too-brief run today with its 2 p.m. matinee.

American playwright Neil Simon's prolific and wide-ranging contributions to theater range from the sublime (The Odd Couple and Rumors) to the ridiculous (Fools), with God's Favorite - now onstage through tomorrow - falling somewhere in the middle. While it's not one of the master craftsman's best scripts, it nonetheless is certain to provoke thought and when performed by a talented cast of actors, like it is in its current iteration at The Barn, it is certain to entertain and to evoke an emotional response.

Over coffee, on the morning after seeing Verge Theater Company's production of Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play - the dark comedy by Anne Washburn, directed by Nashville theater veteran Amanda Card - last weekend, a friend allowed as how he had heard of the play, but had no idea what it was about, asking me for a brief synopsis: "It's about a group of five people in a post-apocalyptic society, presumably brought about by nuclear events across the country, if not the world, who entertain one another with detailed stories based upon episodes from The Simpson," I answered.

Compellingly dramatic and featuring an exquisitely emphatic score performed by a dazzling cadre of triple-threat actors and a 15-person orchestra, Miss Saigon once again lands at Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall this week for an eight-performance run that will almost certainly stand out among the very best of productions to play Music City during the tenure of departing CEO Kathleen O'Brien. With heart-stopping performances by its trio of stars – Red Concepcion as The Engineer, Emily Bautista as Kim and Anthony Festa as Chris are superb – who are ably supported by a huge company of equally impressive performers, Miss Saigon is at once one of musical theater's most stunning examples, while remaining an enigma among audiences yet to experience its power in person.

ACT 1 brings its 2018-19 'Fuck the Classics' Season to a close with director/designer Jim Manning's unique reinterpretation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with Violent Delights, a dance-based retelling set to a score of music from emerging Nashville artists. Violent Delights runs May 24-June 8 at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater.