Jeffrey Ellis - Page 125

Laura Matula is amazing, talented, fascinating, intriguing - and so much more. Seriously, there are so many words to describe her that you find yourself stymied by the multi-layered and multi-dimensional being that is she. That is until the celebrity biographers come a-calling or the producers start planning the film treatment of her astounding and compelling life story.

The Renaissance Center in Dickson presents a unique production of Annie, Jr., a Broadway Junior version of one of the most beloved musicals of all time, running March 11-20. The Young Entertainers on Stage (Y.E.S.) production is adapted for young performers and is cast entirely with kids from first through 12th grades. The seven-time Tony Award winning musical boasts a hit score that includes 'It's A Hard Knock Life,' 'You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile,' 'Easy Street' and the song used to cheer up children of all generations, 'Tomorrow.'

Cinda McCain may have been born with the express purpose of bringing Tennessee Williams' wounded yet fiery Southern heroines to life. Unique among Nashville actresses, she's played Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Flora in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton - and now she is playing Maxine Fault in ACT 1's production of The Night of the Iguana at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater.

George W. Manus Jr. directs Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman to mark the first anniversary of his Murfreesboro-based theater company, Out Front on Main Inc. Running, March 17-April 3, The Pillowman is performed Thursday through Sunday evenings at 7:30 p.m.

Civil War Voices, a new musical by James R. Harris and Mark Hayes, currently in production at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, will be the featured theatrical event during South Carolina's Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration in Charleston, April 8-12. Seven performances of the musical will be staged at Charleston's Memminger Auditorium.

Remind me someday to tell you my Connie Francis story - although, in retrospect, it probably veers dangerously close to the realm of 'you had to be there,' but then again, who among you has a Connie Francis story to tell? The Italian-American songstress, who was such a presence in American pop culture in the middle of the last century, has been on my mind a lot since seeing Breaking Up is Hard to Do, an appealing, if slight, musical revue featuring the hits of Neil Sedaka, now onstage at The Gaslight Dinner Theatre at The Renaissance Center in Dickson.

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.

Tonya Pewitt stars as plus-size heroine Tracy Turnblad - with Michael Holder as Link - who has a passion for dancing, and wins a spot on the local TV dance program, in the musical comedy Hairspray, next up at Nashville's Street Theatre Company, March 25-April 16.

Jennifer Drake is one of the leading lights of the relatively young - and Nashville-based - Dance Theatre of Tennessee, taking on major roles for the company throughout its short history. Most recently, she was featured in the company's midwinter repertory Aspects of Love, performed at The Harpeth Hall School.

Everyone warned me: from the very first person who heard I would be seeing Tuesdays With Morrie at Cumberland County Playhouse to the stage manager I saw in the lobby just before heading into the Adventure Theatre where Daniel Black and John Fionte hold sway as sportswriter Mitch Albom and his mentor Morrie Schwartz in Albom's sharp and sentimental play, directed by Nicole Begue. They all warned me.

Camp Rock, The Musical could easily be dismissed as so much homogenized, Disneyfied, teenaged pablum - but, in reality, it's much more than that. It's a fast-moving, engaging love story set to music and is much more akin to all those Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney 'let's put on a show!' movies than you might expect.

Nashville favorite Tyson Laemmel stars as Robbie, 'a cheesy, but lovable New Jersey rocker' in Circle Players' upcoming production of The Wedding Singer, the upbeat romantic musical comedy that debuted on Broadway in 2006 and is based on the 1998 Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore movie. Starring opposite Laemmel is Laura Thomas Sonn as 'a hopelessly romantic waitress.'

Before she returns to Broadway in a much-anticipated revival next year, Annie - America's best-known comic strip orphan turned musical comedy heroine - makes a stop in Franklin as the beloved musical that's 'all about her' hits the stage at Bethlehem United Methodist Church, March 4-13.

Born in Texas, but a Nashvillian through-and-through, Jake Speck might look like your stereotypical matinee idol - tall and good-looking - but there's a certain affable goofiness about him that completely blows the stereotype out of the water. You can't help but like the guy! Add to that immense likability factor a whole bunch of talent and you have a very formidable force of nature in the person of Jake Speck.

The Renaissance Center in Dickson presents a unique production of Annie, Jr., a Broadway Junior version of one of the most beloved musicals of all time, running March 11-20. The Young Entertainers on Stage (Y.E.S.) production is adapted for young performers and is cast entirely with kids from first through 12th grades. The seven-time Tony Award winning musical boasts a hit score that includes 'It's A Hard Knock Life,' 'You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile,' 'Easy Street' and the song used to cheer up children of all generations, 'Tomorrow.'

Neil Sedaka's music is featured in Breaking Up is Hard to Do, now onstage through March 19 at the Gaslight Dinner Theatre at The Renaissance Center in Dickson, kicking off the theater's 2011 season with the Tennessee premiere of the musical revue.

Kandace Christian plays Margaret Mitchell - who created one of the biggest and best novels of the 20th Century with Gone With the Wind - in a one-actor play called Mrs. John Marsh, to be performed Thursday, March 17, at the public library in Franklin, Tennessee.

Johnny Peppers and Jenny Norris-Light lead the cast of Bethlehem Players' Annie, opening Friday, March 4, at Franklin's Bethlehem United Methodist Church, running through March 13. Directed by Dietz Osborne, each performance of the classic musical comedy will give audience members the chance to adopt a special dog from Happy Tales Humane.

Clint Jefferies' The Three Musketeers, a musical retelling of the classic Alexandre Dumas tale of the young D'Artagnan, who leaves home to seek for adventure and glory in Paris with the King's Musketeers, will be presented by Donelson's Larry Keeton Theatre, March 11-27.

Now onstage through March 13 at the Z. Alexander Looby Theater, in a nicely appointed production from Tennessee Women's Theater Project, Impressionism gives audiences a chance to see some fine Nashville actors in a play that is simply not up to their best efforts. Even Maryanna Clarke's focused direction and the leading performances of Holly Allen and Jeremy Childs - and a knockout supporting performance by Tamiko Robinson - are unsuccessful in making Jacobs' script more than what is: a pretentious attempt to use impressionist art to amplify the story of two characters who aren't that sympathetic and are only interesting because you have nowhere else to look.