Review: The Collective's SHOWSTOPPERS

There's nothing like a good musical revue - replete with well-chosen songs, performed by a talented coterie of professional performers who are ably supported by a cast of fresh-faced youngsters showing off their burgeoning talents in concert with their more seasoned counterparts - and The Collective (Nashville's newest theatrical endeavor aka The Music City Theatre Collective) certainly delivers the goods with the debut of Showstoppers, presented this weekend at St. Philip's Episcopal Church's Dimmick Hall in Donelson.

Under the aegis of executive director Martha Wilkinson, managing director Chase Michael Miller, artistic director Curtis Reed and consulting artistic director Jenny Norris-Light ("We're all directing around here," quipped Wilkinson during the pre-curtain speech on Friday night, to which Miller retorted they would be happy to "direct traffic" even, if it means more money for the fledgling company's coffers), The Collective has collected (you may insert your own audible moan here - sorry, it's early, and the open bar at the gala opening night celebration has wreaked havoc on my brain) together an impressive cadre of professionals to lead classes and conduct workshops, to perform with and to inspire the young students striving to hone their theatrical skills.

Paired with their younger charges for Showstoppers, the professionals do much of the heavy lifting in the energetic revue, but it's clear that the younger cast members will be challenging them at auditions still to come in the future. Although, I must admit, that every person on that stage and in the audience for opening night probably would trade their souls to become even one-quarter of the star that Martha Wilkinson is - but more about that later.

Friday night was exciting, of course, with an undercurrent of "another opening, another show" antics and hijinks permeating the room (which made that Cole Porter showtune standard the perfect opening number), but it was made all the more noteworthy by the announcement that The Collective will be partnering with Metro Parks' theater program to stage a full production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's genre-changing Oklahoma! in the Centennial Park Bandshell this summer, prior to Nashville Shakespeare Festival's annual festival of "all things Bard" in August and September that will feature "an original musical, set in 1960s Nashville," aka The Comedy of Errors.

In addition, Wilkinson and Miller announced The Collective's partnership with Nashville CARES, the agency that has worked tirelessly for the good of people with HIV/AIDS since the 1980s. A portion of proceeds from Showstoppers will be the first of many such funds donated to CARES in the future by the artists of The Collective.

The revue's musical program - choreographed and curated by Reed - features a through-line of Broadway musical theater change and evolution from the 1940s (e.g. the aforementioned Oklahoma! served as a starting-off point, although nothing from that seminal score is featured in the Showstoppers line-up) to the present, with the workshop cast members providing the narration for the artistic journey. While the musical revue will remind you of cruise ship entertainment or a celebration of a musical journey a la the shows at the erstwhile Opryland USA theme park, the spoken narration lends the rather august tone of a PBS special.

There is, certainly, much source material from which to pick among the catalogue of memorable, envelope-pushing and category-changing showtunes, and the choices for Showstoppers includes selections both expected and otherwise. Audrey Johnson, Tosha Pendergrast, James Rudolph and the workshop cast bring Kiss Me, Kate to life with their performance of "Another Op'nin', Another Show," which is followed up with "Too Darn Hot," which gives Reed, Miller and the rest of the professional company the chance to shine in a well-choreographed and delightfully performed number.

Other highlights of Act One include songs from Guys & Dolls, Damn Yankees (with Mallory Mundy as Lola and Miller as Joe Hardy), The Music Man (featuring Taylor Kelly as Professor Harold Hill) and a terrific performance of West Side Story's "America," starring Mundy, Pendergrast, Melissa Husebo and young Eleni Ekimogloy (one of the workshop cast's shining stars). Johnson is Maria to the workshop cast's Von Trapp children on "Do Re Mi" from The Sound of Music and there's a raucously performed rendition of "Coffee Break" from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying that showcases Reed's choreography and is performed with reckless abandon by the members of the professional cast.

The workshop cast is featured to the obvious delight of the audience on Bye Bye Birdie's "The Telephone Hour" (could there be a more perfect choice?) and a pastiche of numbers from Annie that features the young women of the workshop cast in concert with Nashville's ultimate musical theater diva Martha Wilkinson, cast here as Miss Hannigan (which evokes memories of her performance as Lily in a Tennessee Repertory Theatre production of the musical from a few years back), who shows us once again why she is such a force in local theater. Someone (The Collective, perhaps) should waste no more time in getting the woman her own solo show/concert on the stage before spring turns to summer (although her pesky work schedule - she's directing The Addams Family at Columbia State Community College and starring in Nashville Repertory Theatre's Chicago this spring - may preclude such a production, it definitely needs to be on someone's to-do list).

Wilkinson's knock-your-socks-off performances of Annie's "Little Girls" and her, well, showstopping "Ladies Who Lunch" from Company (she played the role of Joann in Nashville Rep's version a couple of seasons back) and the audience's response bear out my demand for a one-woman concert - and could add more money to the new endeavor's treasury than anything else I could possibly imagine.

Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva's performance of "Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News" from The Wiz is a brilliant choice for Showstoppers, allowing her interaction with the younger performers which thrills the audience no end, and the over-the-top numbers provides the perfect segue to Brooke Leigh Davis' heartfelt "Home" from the same show.

Miller's emotion-paced performance of "Being Alive" from Company provided Act One with another of its musical highlights.

Act Two moves the cast, crew and audience into the 1970s, with an opening number of "Hand Jive" from Grease, led by James Rudolph and performed by the professional cast, along with Workshop members Seth Bennett, Ciara Southard and Dakota Lang.

Johnson commands the stage with her performance of "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" from Andrew Lloyd Weber's Evita, followed by a wonderfully soulful version of Big River's "Muddy Waters," ably performed by Rudolph and Lang. Rudolph teams with Davis for an electrifying performance of "Phantom of the Opera" and the workshop cast is featured on a pair of tunes from Matilda the Musical (the national touring company is currently encamped at TPAC's Andrew Jackson Hall through Sunday).

Reed reprises his performance of "Memphis Lives in Me" from Memphis the Musical (he played the lead role of Huey in Street Theatre Company's production a season or two ago), that is as good a version of that beloved song as any we've heard.

Newsies and Hairspray are given their due on the program - and although the latter title has been produced by virtually every theater company around the world, The Collective proves yet again why the musical is so successful with its high-spirited performances of "Good Morning, Baltimore" (Johnson is terrific as Tracy Turnblad) and "You Can't Stop the Beat" that fills Dimmick Hall to close out the show.

However, it's the performance of Rent's "Seasons of Love" that stops the show: beautifully sung, confidently performed and emotionally moving, it's the selection that still had audience members talking as they left the theater.

• Showstoppers. Directed and choreographed by Curtis Reed. Presented by The Music City Theatre Collective, at St. Philip's Episcopal Church's Dimmick Hall, 85 Fairway Drive, Nashville. Through Sunday, January 31. For tickets, call (615) 918-0647 or go to www.musiccitytheatrecollective.com. Running time (2 hours, with one 15-minute intermission).

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