Jeffrey Ellis - Page 142

Nashville Ballet ushers in the holiday season in glorious style with its revival of artistic director Paul Vasterling's visionary re-interpretation of The Nutcracker, onstage at TPAC's Andrew Jackson Hall through December 20. More accurately referred to as Nashville's Nutcracker, Vasterling's epic work is a joyous, colorful Christmas card to the people of Music City who have embraced it with their customary warmth and rewarded it with their own glowing accolades.

A graduate of Nashville's Overton High School and Western Kentucky University, Christi Dortch is also one of those hard-to-find Nashville natives. With Music City serving as an entertainment mecca, attracting creative types from all over the world, Christi is homegrown, as it were, plying her trade in her hometown - and loving every minute of it. When she left to work for the Westport (Connecticut) Country Playhouse, her presence was sorely missed and her subsequent homecoming was greeted with enthusiasm by her friends, family and supporters - and TPAC patrons who have her to thank for some of their greatest theatrical experiences.

Like hundreds, maybe even thousands, of other Nashvillians before and since, Carolyn German would walk through the lobby of the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre, passing by the historical marker heralding Looby's role in Nashville history without really giving it much thought. Then one day, during a visit to the Looby Center in her role as director of theatre for Metro Nashville Parks, German stopped and read intently the information included on the plaque, learning that Looby was an attorney who played in a key role in Nashville's storied civil rights history.

Somebody's stolen Santa's Christmas Magic and a crafty young girl and some of her special friends have joined forces to get it back in the Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre presentation of Sarah and the Secret of Santaland, a new play by J. Dietz Osborne and Nate Eppler, based on a story by Davey Peppers. The world premiere production debuts on Tuesday, December 8, and continues through December 19 at the venerable Nashville venue, with doors opening at 10 a.m. and the show starting at 11 a.m.

In Europe, the Nazis had invaded Poland, in Washington, D.C. FDR was dealing with an isolationist Congress and people the world over worried about the possibility of a war to eclipse the horrors of The Great War. But in Atlanta, the Levys and the Freitags were more concerned, in the long-term, about marrying off their two daughters and, in the short-term, finding escorts for the two girls to the ball that serves as the climax to Ballyhoo, the South's preeminent social whirl for the region's more affluent Jews.

David Alford, former artistic director of Tennessee Repertory Theatre, will emcee the event that will feature the entire roster of GrandVista's artists, including the 30-piece Orchestra Mastrangelo, Perry Danos, Marty Raybon, Shelean Newman and the GrandVista Kids. The Extravaganza will also feature the legendary Fisk Jubilee Singers in a special guest appearance, and the only Nashville performance this year of David Alford and Paul Carrol Binkley's nostalgic treatment of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory.

The Nashville-based actor is always onstage, getting ready to onstage, recovering from being onstage - well, you get the drift - Brian Russell works a lot. During his tenure in Music City, he's justifiably gained a reputation as one of the city's most talent thespians and he's worked for most of the major companies in town, including Tennessee Repertory Theatre, Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, Nashville Shakespeare Festival and Nashville Children's Theatre. As versatile as he is busy, with a resume as long as his arm, Russell might have won the most acclaim for his performances in works by the Bard, but he's been lauded just as vociferously for his roles in comedies and musical theatre.

Hansel and Gretel plays Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with 2 p.m. matinees on Saturday, December 12 and 19. Tickets are $20 (adults) and $15 (ages 13 and under) and can be purchased online at www.roxyregionaltheatre.org, by phone at (931) 645-7699, or at the theatre during regular box office hours (9 a.m.-2 p.m. weekdays). Dinner/show combinations are also available for selected Saturday evening performances.

Mark Cabus' A Christmas Carol will be performed at 7:30 p.m. December 17, 18 and 19, and on Sunday, December 20, at 4 p.m. Tickets are $15 at the door; $12 in advance at TicketsNashville.com. Discounted tickets, priced at $10, are available for Actors Equity members, while students and seniors with ID will only pay $5. This performance is appropriate for the whole family but suggested for children 12 and over.

Directed by the multi-talented Tim Fudge, who does double duty as music director of the piece, Sanders Family Christmas is an affectionately drawn tribute to simpler times that is sure to evoke memories of home and hearth - and if you're country-born, as am I, you'll find yourself missing family members who are no longer with you. That alone makes the show an ideal pick for this sentimental season of the year, but it's Fudge's direction and the commendable efforts of his very talented cast that make it one of the year's strongest productions.

'2009's theme, Step Into The Future, was very much about establishing a brand reputation for us,' explained ART's artistic director Jeff Obafemi Carr. 'We're confident now that when you come to an ART production, you have a unique experience from the front to the back door. We've taken into account the thousands of people who have seen our productions over the course of '09 and things they've responded to well - both artistic and aesthetic - and crafted a schedule of offerings we believe will continue to influence Nashville's cultural landscape in a profound way. We want the city to see that much of the future of great theater is happening right now, in North Nashville.'

Most recently, she appeared in Picasso at the Lapin Agile at Boiler Room Theatre and now serves as secretary of the board of directors for Street Theatre Company. She's appeared in productions for Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, Actors Bridge Ensemble, Circle Players, ACT I, Nashville Shakespeare Festival - well, you get the idea...this woman has built an impressive resume in Nashville, including an acclaimed turn as the Stage Manager in ACT I's production of Our Town, Nurse Ratched in Street Theatre Company's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and one amazing turn as Magenta in The Rocky Horror Show for one very lucky and grateful director (yours truly).

Tennessee Rep's A Christmas Story may be as good as it gets this holiday season. Wrapped up in a spectacularly designed package by Gary Hoff and featuring the cleverly imaginative direction of Rene Dunshee Copeland, it's the one Christmas gift you owe yourself this year. And it's a surefire way to lift your spirits and make you forget all the bad news that inundates your everyday life.

Directed by Brendan Cataldo, The Eight: Reindeer Monologues features Alicia Kelly, Drew Torkelson, Adam Kurtz and Humberto Figueroa. The dark Christmas comedy plays two nights only - Firday, November 27, and Saturday, November 28, at 8 p.m. in theotherspace, the 50-seat black box theatre located upstairs at Clarksville's Roxy Regional Theatre.

Mame begins in the roaring '20s, when Mame Dennis is rolling in the dough and leads the life of an eccentric, Bohemian socialite. Things change when she is appointed guardian to her 10-year-old nephew Patrick. When the Great Depression hits, Mame becomes virtually penniless overnight - trying to make ends meet at any number of odd jobs, including one as a retail sales clerk, quite often failing but refusing to allow the times to dictate her mood or dampen her spirits.

Directed by Nate Eppler, Christmas Belles is staged in the round at Chaffin's Barn (as are all their shows), which works well for the play's hilariously overblown situations. Audiences have a birds-eye view of everything that's happening and that lends an even greater ring of authenticity to the hijinks unfolding onstage. By using every square foot of the Barn's playing area, Eppler involves the audience more intimately in the yuletide frivolities at the Tabernacle of the Lamb Church.

You can tell a great deal about the Nashville theatre community through the productions staged, you can read feature stories and reviews until the cows come home, but to really know what a life in the theatre is all about in Nashville, you have to get to know the people, the personalities who give Music City its dramatic flair. The first person profiled in this series is Brenda Sparks, an accomplished actress, respected director, competent producer and stage manager, wife and mother...Brenda wears a lot of different hats in her day-to-day life and she wears them well.

Director/playwright Robert A. O'Connell's latest work, Christmas on the Pecos, opens in a new production at Darkhorse Theatre December 4-20, the latest offering from GroundWorks Theatre. Described as 'a gentle comedy,' Christmas on the Pecos takes place on Christmas Eve as two modern cowboys, sheltering from a storm, find themselves playing host to a couple seeking protection from the elements and the law.

As can be expected from Nashville Children's Theatre, the production is colorful and fun, cleverly staged and superbly acted by the seven-member ensemble under the capable direction of NCT's producing artistic director Scot Copeland. With music direction by the gifted Paul Carrol Binkley, the musical's on a strong artistic footing and the versatility of the seven actors onstage, who enact the book's cast of characters, give winning performances that are made all the more entertaining by Viorst's focused storytelling.

Created by Jean Doumanian, Jeffrey Richards and Rick Steiner ('in association with Janet Pailet,' according to the program), The Great American Trailer Park Musical is about all the rednecks, hicks and white trash you've ever met - well, if you know anybody from the aforementioned groups - and the whole set-up is beyond hilarious and so inspired by the tasteless that you simply cannot go and not enjoy yourself. Unless, of course, you hope to hear every word and see every bit of onstage business.