CRITICS' CHOICE: The Weekend's Best Bets

The weekend is upon us and that means that tonight is opening night for a couple of new shows (with performances continuing through the weekend) and closing performances of several others, including Newsies (at TPAC), Circle Players' The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and the farewell production of GroundWorks Theatre's Starlite Waltz. Meanwhile, John Chaffin's Cliffhanger continues at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre and Cumberland County Playhouse continues its 50th anniversary season with a whole slate of terrific shows.

So, make plans to see some live theater this weekend. We have it on good authority that Aloha, the new Cameron Crowe film starring Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone really sucks. Meanwhile, The Rock's new disaster flick - San Andreas - might be riveting, but who needs to be reminded that America is built on shaky ground. Escape to the theater!

It's opening night, y'all! Inspiration for an original musical can be found just about anywhere, if you are to believe the history of musical theater: Show Boat came from an Edna Ferber novel, Oklahoma from a play called Green Grow the Lilacs and Kinky Boots from a rather obscure British film, proving that the genesis for a new show may be found just about anywhere. It can even be found in ways more personal and certainly more intimate, like Geoff Davin's inspiration for his new musical with the enviable title of The First Church of Mary, The Repentant Prostitute's FIFTH ANNUAL Benefit Concert, Revival, and Pot Luck Dinner

Subtitled "a play about Faith, Narcissism, & Red Velvet Cake," The First Church of Mary (which is how we will refer to it hereafter) allows Davin to don a wig and heels - "yet again," according to the show's press release - to play his newest creation Adamenses Huckster, the protagonist of his "new play (with music)."

Directed by nine-time First Night Award winner Martha Wilkinson, The First Church of Mary stars an impressive cast of Nashville favorites, including Megan Murphy Chambers, Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva, Brooke Leigh Davis and Rosemary Fossee, in addition to the versatile and imaginative Davin (whose previous onstage forays, if one needs further proof of his range, include the critically acclaimed role of Dr. Frank N Furter in Boiler Room Theatre's The Rocky Horror Show and Nashville Rep's productions of Death of a Salesman and A Christmas Story).

Performances take place at BLDG Nashville, located in the Five Points area of East Nashville, with performances set for May 29-31. All tickets purchased now through tomorrow (May 24) are $38. All tickets purchased after May 24 will jump up to $45. The ticket price includes a full barbecue dinner (vegetarian options available as well) catered by Drifters Nashville. The dinner includes pulled pork or barebecued chicken, macaroni and cheese, and slaw. The vegetarian option substitutes fried tofu for the pork or chicken. And like every good church potluck in the South, there's plenty of iced tea to be had, and you can even sneak in a bottle of your favorite libation, without fear of any church roofs fallling on your drunken head. Go to www.repentantprostitute.com for details and to purchase tickets!

From my review of the opening night performance: "In a room packed full of friends, loved ones and supporters, Geoff Davin helped ring down the curtain on the world premiere of The First Church of Mary, The Repentant Prostitute's Fifth Annual Benefit Concert, Revival and Pot Luck Dinner Friday night by reminding those people that they were, indeed, the first to witness the show which heretofore had resided in his creative brain and great big heart. With an artful blending of luck and determination, it could well be the harbinger of more nights just like it to come: Times when those initial First Church of Mary virgins will remember when...in an effort to prove their street cred and elevate their level of coolness.

For, make no bones about it: The First Church of Mary, The Repentant Prostitute's Fifth Annual Benefit Concert, Revival and Pot Luck Dinner (or "Prostitute's Picnic," as it was called by director Martha Wilkinson in her pre-show welcome to the congregants gathered at BLDG Nashville for opening night) deserves bigger audiences, more vociferous acclaim and a life far beyond the walls of the intimate venue in which it was first introduced to the public-at large.

How to describe the experience is not an easy task, for this particular Prostitute's Picnic is perhaps unlike anything you've seen before. A celebration of church, pop culture, Southern food and fellowship, all set to a musical score filled with original songs written by the creator - aka Davin, some in collaboration with a bevy of his talented cohorts - and new arrangements of traditional gospel tunes that represent a particular brand of religious fervor, leavened with a modicum of hellfire and brimstone. It's an outlandish, tremendously entertaining and only slightly scary in the I-hope-I'm-not-struck-down-by-lightening manner of things, evening of theater that will leave your mouth agape, your soul soaring and your mind reeling from the performances onstage.

We definitely went to church last night - and may well have found ourselves in heaven, for all I know - I am just happy to say that I was there for the fervent worship, laugh-out-loud froth and fun, and for the barbecue dinner provided since we forgot to bring a covered dish."

The only thing funnier than a Southern funeral is a Southern wedding! Arts Center of Cannon County in Woodbury presents Southern Fried Nuptials, written by Nashville's own Dietz Osborne and Nate Eppler, opening tonight and running through June 13, with curtain at 7:30 p.m., with 2 p.m. matinee performances on May 31 and June 7.

The charmingly funny Frye family is back and this time they are going to get married. Or maybe not? The engagement of Attie VanLeer and Harline Frye has been on again, off again more times than a drunken frat boy on a mechanical bull. Now half the town has been invited, the dress has been fitted, the flowers have been ordered and the gifts are piling up in the living room. Will they or won't they? You'll have to find out in this hysterical hit comedy from the authors of Southern Fried Funeral.

Directed by Donald Fann and produced by Brittany Goodwin, Southern Fried Nuptials features many familiar faces including Melanie Nistad, Rachel Parker, Brittany Goodwin, Mike Reed, Greg Ray, Candilyn Ford, John Goodwin, Hunter Thaw, Terri Ritter, Bobby Ray and Donna Seage. Ticket prices are $13 with discounts available for seniors and full-time students.

Here's what I wrote about the play's world premiere in 2012: In Southern Fried Nuptials, it's a year after the action ended in the original play, and the newly widowed Dorothy Frye is adapting to her new life-rather tentatively-while preparing for the pending wedding of her oldest daughter, Harline (the one with the jaded past, who like the prodigal son of yore returned with enough emotional baggage to keep Louis Vuitton in business for decades), to her childhood sweetheart (and local attorney) Atticus Van Leer. There's all manner of hilarity that ensues during the play's two acts, what with Dorothy's other daughter, Sammi Jo, working hard to keep her own baggage neatly stored out of sight and sound, and wacky young son Dewey Jr. riding herd over the passel of wedding gifts that are arriving daily at the Fryes' front door.

This production is sponsored by First National Bank and will be on stage May 29 through June 13, at the Arts Center of Cannon County, 1424 John Bragg Highway, just west of the town of Woodbury, approximately 20 minutes from Murfreesboro, Manchester, and McMinnville and one hour southeast of Nashville. Box office hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Tickets are available now by calling the box office at 615-563-(ARTS)2787 or online at artscenterofcc.com, and (subject to availability) at the door one hour prior to show time.

Disney Theatrical Productions and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center announce that the Tony Award-winning smash hit musical, NEWSIES, continues its engagement at TPAC's Andrew Jackson Hall through Sunday.

Newsies, the new American musical, features a Tony Award-winning score with music by eight-time Academy Award winner Alan Menken and lyrics by Jack Feldman, a book by four-time Tony Award winner Harvey Fierstein and is produced by Disney Theatrical Productions. Newsies is directed by Tony nominee Jeff Calhoun and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, who won a 2012 Tony Award for his work. The entire creative team has reunited to bring the break-out smash musical to audiences across North America.

Here's my take on the show: "Newsies lacks the emotional heft and the epic sweep that is needed for a historical saga such as the one told in the musical to totally immerse its audiences in the experience. Newsies lacks the gravitas to place it alongside such shows as Ragtime, Titanic or Les Miserables. And while it's likely that was not the intent of the show's creative team, the comparisons seem logical given the musical's subject matter.

Fierstein's book is clever enough-oh, those wisecracking teen paperboys - and the action moves along at a sprightly pace, but Menken's score is unexceptional and derivative and definitely uninspired. Insofar as Feldman's lyrics are concerned, they are often lost in the muddied and muddled sound design, so who knows what the characters are singing about, save for the price of newspapers in 1899 New York, life in a boys' reformatory and of the near-mythical wonders of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Based on the 1992 film of the same name, Newsies focuses on the real-life 1899 Newsboys Strike in New York City, in which the horrors and rigors of child labor - and the plight of the poor in general - were brought sharply into focus in the time of yellow journalism and the rampant greed of America's gilded age. We're told throughout the musical that things are bad and times are hard, but gosh darn it!, those aforementioned newsies are an optimistic brood of tough-talking New Yawkuhs who long for the love of a family, three squares and a comfy bed in which to sleep every night.

It's a story that should be told, filled with many untold truths amid the changing times peopled by historic characters like Joseph Pulitzer (whose monetary bequest inspired the prizes for journalism excellence that bear his name; he also gave the money to Columbia University that resulted in the country's first college of journalism) and Teddy Roosevelt (interestingly, Pulitzer was indicted in 1909 for libeling TR and J.P. Morgan via the pages of The New York World). But something is definitely missing from the script: while Newsies seems full of heart, it seems devoid of soul."

Tickets are available at www.tpac.org, by phone at (615) 782-4040, and at the TPAC Box Office, 505 Deaderick Street, in downtown Nashville. For group tickets, call (615) 782-4060.

One of Nashville's most innovative theater companies - Five Dollar Recession Theater Company - has outgrown its original name to become Verge Theater Company just in time for its premiere production of Steven Dietz's The Nina Variations, which runs through Saturday.

Playing at Belmont's Black Box Theater on Compton Avenue, The Nina Variations is directed by Jaclynn Jutting, head of the BFA Directing Program at Belmont University, and starring Holly Butler, Justin Hand, Kristin McCalley Landiss and Nettie Kraft.

Tickets are pay-what-you-can with suggested prices based on age and income. For more information, go to www.vergetheaterco.org.

GroundWorks Theatre bids farewell to the Nashville theater scene with its final performances of Keith Trawick's Starlite Waltz at Darkhorse Theatre. The show - and the company - shutters after Saturday night's show.

In Starlite Waltz, Candy and Rhonda deal with life at the Starlite Motel and Supper Club, waiting on tables and the chance to get up on stage and show the world what they can do. But life isn't easy. Candy has run away from an abusive husband and Rhonda is running as fast as she can in her search for Mr. Right, which can wear a girl out, if you know what I mean. Can they run fast enough and in the right direction to make it all happen? Come find out.

Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. tonight and Saturday. Ticket prices are $15 Adult and $12 Seniors (60+) and Students. Tickets may be purchased online at www.groundworkstheatre.com

After 22 years , the ever-popular Smoke on the Mountain returns to Cumberland County Playhouse - Tennessee's Family Theater - and has settled in for a summer run through October 10.

Smoke takes place on a Saturday night in Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, and the Reverend Oglethorpe has invited the Sanders Family Singers to provide an uplifting evening of song. The audience becomes the congregation as two dozen traditional and original hymns weave together with stories of witness from family members, along with a healthy dose of laughter.

Leading the 2015 cast are Playhouse favorites Patty Payne as June Sanders, Jason Ross as Mervin Oglethorpe, and Daniel Black as Burl Sanders; among the three of them, they've appeared in well over one thousand performances of Smoke since the show opened in the Adventure Theater in 1994. The cast also includes Lauren Marshall, who does double duty as Vera Sanders and the show's Music Director. John Dobbratz will appear as Uncle Stanley, with Chance Wall as son Dennis and Ellie Burnett as Dennis's twin sister Denise.

Smoke on the Mountain opens runs through October 10. Call (931) 484-5000 for tickets and information or visit www.ccplayhouse.com. Also playing at the Playhouse are Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash, featuring Kellye Cash, through June 9; Singin' in the Rain, through July 12. Mary Poppins opens on the Mainstage on June 12.

Circle Players wraps up its run of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, continuing through this weekend at Pearl Cohn Comprehensive High School.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is an upbeat ending to Circle Players' 65th season. It's the story of an eclectic group of six pubescents who vie for the spelling championship of a lifetime. While candidly disclosing hilarious and touching stories from their home lives, the 'tweens spell their way through a series of (potentially made-up) words hoping to never hear the soul-crushing, pout-inducing, life un-affirming "ding" of the bell that signals a spelling mistake.

Here's an excerpt from my review of the show: "Under Waldrep's finely tuned direction, and Rolin Mains' exceptional musical direction, the cast brings their quirky characters to life with a sense of unbridled enthusiasm that spell F-U-N for their audiences and prove, once again, that Spelling Bee is as delightful and entertaining nowadays as it ever was when first you laid eyes on William Barfee, Leaf Coneybear and Olive Ostrovsky. That rag-tag bunch of competitive spellers who have been making the community and regional theater circuit ever since the show scored big at the Tony Awards in 2005 remain as engaging and as weirdly sweet as you remember and their onstage antics are just as hilarious.

Waldrep's ensemble - a captivating blend of Nashville stage veterans and bright and shiny new faces - take on the challenge of their characters with enthusiasm, delivering a performance that's sure to please and which touches the heart in all the places both expected and unexpected. Perhaps most noteworthy, however, is the completely unique take on the aforementioned William Barfee by Jason Lewis, that is somehow fresh, original and wonderfully off-kilter. Lewis' return to the Nashville stage is most welcome."

Performances continue through Sunday, May31, with a special Saturday matinee on May 30. For tickets, go to www.circleplayers.net.

Murfreesboro's Center for the Arts will bid goodbye to its production of the Frank Wildhorn musical Bonnie and Clyde, which wraps up this Sunday, May 31. Described as an "electrifying story of love, adventure and the crimes that captured the attention of the country is fearless in its betrayal of the reckless young lovers," Bonnie and Clyde features a score of songs by Wildhorn and Don Black.

The Center for the Arts' production of Bonnie and Clyde is directed by Kim Powers, with musical direction by Charlie Parker and choreography by Emily Davis. Starring in the title roles are Michael Adcock as Clyde and Jamie Lawler as Bonnie, with Patrick Kramer, Corey Shadd, Britt Byrd and Gary Davis. Rounding out the 28 person cast are numerous ensemble members who also double as multiple characters.

Bonnie and Clyde runs through May 31, with performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and $13 for Seniors, Students and Military and $11 for children age 12 and under. Tickets can be purchased on the Center's website - www.boroarts.org - by calling (615)904-2787, or by stopping by the Center during business hours.

To post a comment, you must register and login.