Critic's Choice: Don't Miss These Shows, Y'all!

Theater-goers from our neck o' the woods have been quite spoiled already this year - and 2016 is barely three months old - and the hits, as they are wont to say, just keep on coming. In fact, there's so much great theater going on in the Nashville area right now, that you may be having a difficult time choosing among the bounteous offerings local companies are providing you.

We're delighted to help you plan your weekend activities with BWW Nashville's Critics Choice, offering up a compendium of what's available, what we recommend you see, and - in the cases of show's we've seen already - snippets of our reviews to help you make up your mind!

First up this weekend, audiences can choose between two productions of Lin-Manuel Miranda's acclaimed - and altogether charming and entertaining - In the Heights, opening Thursday night at Hume-Fogg Academic High School, courtesy of 2014 First Night Honoree Daron Bruce's outstanding theater students, and on Friday night at Bailey Middle School, were 2011 First Night Star Award winner Cathy Street bids farewell to Music City with her own production of the musical theater hit for the eponymous Street Theatre Company. But rather than make a theatrical, but we daresay dramatic, Sophie's Choice between the two productions, we suggest you follow our lead and see both productions - they are both certain to be outstanding and what fun it will be to compare and contrast the two mountings.

Hume-Fogg Academic High School Theatre's In The Heights runs through March 5 and tells the universal story of a vibrant community in New York's Washington Heights neighborhood - a place where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. Reserved seats are $13 available and are available online www.hfatheatre.com; General Admission: $10 Adults, $5 Students.

Street Theatre Company's In The Heights plays through March 20, as Street Theatre Company launches its 11th season with the smash musical that took Broadway by storm and paved the way for Miranda's new Broadway blockbuster Hamilton. Directed by STC founding artistic director Cathy Sanborn Street, In The Heights will be her farewell production in Nashville as she and her husband, JJ Street move to Wilmington, North Carolina in March. The musical fuses the classic styles of musical theater showtunes with hip-hop and Latin rhythms to tell the heart-warming and universal story of family and belonging.

In The Heights is onstage at Street Theatre Company's current home - Bailey Middle School in East Nashville - March 9-20. Curtain is at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with Sunday shows at 5 p.m., along with one 2 p.m matinee performance on Saturday, March 12. Tickets are $20 for adults and $16 for students and seniors, and are available by contacting the Box Office at (615) 554-7414. All tickets are pay-what-you-can on Sundays.

Bradley Moore puts his own unique spin, directing and adapting Aristophanes' Lysistrata, as ACT 1 presents its fourth show of the 2015/2016 season, featuring a cast of respected Nashville actors. According to a synopsis, provided by ACT 1 executive director Memory Strong, of Moore's adaptation: "When a brave group of women decide to stand up for peace, they find a powerful, yet unlikely strategy to get their own way. They tell their men the sex stops unless they stop fighting. Lysistrata by Aristophanes has been given a modern twist and dropped into a modern-day woman's prison in ACT 1's bold new take on this classic."

Moore's version of Aristophanes' classic play focuses on a group of women in confinement who are fighting for their basic rights and privileges, which have been all but revoked by the Athens Prison authorities while a great territorial war is being fought on the outside. When the free women of the town catch wind of Lysistrata's plan to regain peace on the inside, they join in the crusade by withholding sex themselves to demand peace on the outside. With hugely comedic elements of physical theatre and exaggerated characters, this offbeat adaptation is a vibrant take on an Ancient Greek classic - and there's not a toga in sight.

Moore's cast for the premiere production include Cat Arnold (who starred in August: Osage County for ACT 1, directed earlier this season by Moore) as Lysistrata; Austin Olive as the Magistrate; Terry Occhiogrosso as Lampito; Maggie Pitt as Cleonice; Christen Heilman as Myrrhine; Michael James Thomas as Cinesias; with Holly Butler, Sarah Shepherd, Megan Blevins, Cate Eunyoung Jo, Philip Boston, Steve Howie and Eric Ventress as "the people."

Lysistrata opens March 4, 2016 at the Darkhorse and runs through March 18, with Thursday, Friday, and Saturday shows at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m. For further details - and to purchase tickets - go to www.act1online.com.

Opening at Brentwood's Towne Centre Theatre on Friday night is Murder's in the Heir, a farcical musical directed by Lipscomb University favorite Brooke Muriel Ferguson and starring a cast of TCT favorites. Go to www.townecentretheatre.com for details and ticket information.

Turn the game Clue into a play and you have the masterfully entertaining Murder's in the Heir. Simon Starkweather, the tyrannical billionaire, gathers his family and employees to announce the contents of his will. His lawyer, reveals that he has bequeathed vast fortunes to a few odd relatives and his servants. The rejected heirs are not pleased and roam the old mansion carrying such items as an ax, a gun and poison. When Simon is discovered murdered, his grandson is determined to find his grandfather's killer. Almost every character in this hilarious mystery has the weapon, opportunity and motive to commit the unseen murder, and it will be up to the audience to decide who actually did it!

Michael Rex directs a cast of veteran actors and newcomers in Lakewood Theatre Company's upcoming production of Arthur Miller's acclaimed All My Sons. Written in 1947 - and inspired by events of World War II and the true-life story of a woman who alerted authorities to her father's wartime wrong-doing - All My Sons focuses on the story of a businessman who once narrowly avoided financial ruin by shipping cracked machine parts to the military. He blames his business partner and builds an empire, but eventually his crime comes back to haunt him in Miller's riveting play, which is now considered a modern American classic.

Rex's cast includes: Doug Allen as Joe Keller; Kathleen Jaffe as Kate Keller; Ben Gregory as Chris Keller; Andrea Coleman as Ann Deever; Daryl Ritchie as George Deever; Ron Veasey as Dr. Jim Bayless; Andrea Crowe as Sue Bayless; Zach Parker as Frank Lubby; Adrienne Hentschel as Lydia Lubby; and Chloe McKanna as Betina.

All My Sons runs March 4-20, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. For reservations, call (615) 847-0934, or tickets may be purchased online at www.ticketsnashville.com. Lakewood Theatre is located at 2211 Old Hickory Boulevard. Season passes are available now.

Coming up on Monday night, March 7, is Playhouse Nashville's staged Reading of Strong Inside, starring David Chattam, at the First Amendment Center on the Vanderbilt University campus. Adapted from the award-winning book by Andrew Maraniss, Strong Inside is a new play detailing the journey of Perry Wallace - the Nashville native who broke the color barrier as the first African-American basketball player in the Southeastern Conference at Vanderbilt from 1966-1970. Chattam portrays Wallace and other influential figures who left their indelible mark on the turbulent times in unforgettable ways in a script currently under development by Playhouse Nashville. Admission is free and begins with a reception from 6:30 to 7 p.m. prior to the reading. A talkback with the creative team immediately follows the reading.

There is so much good theater to be found on area stages, that it's almost like choosing from the groaning board of Southern delicacies (mmmmm, roast beef and peanut butter pie) offered up at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, where the Martha Wilkinson-directed Funny Valentines, which runs through March 13, is currently onstage, starring Barn favorites Brett Cantrell, Jenny Norris-Light, Jeremy Maxwell and Lydia Bushfield - and newcomer Audrey Johnson!

Here's what we wrote in our review last Sunday: "Ah, the 1970s - what a decade, am I right? - the perfect time period for theatrical farce, what with its polyester double-knit slacks, soft and silky Nik-Nik shirts, some swell television sitcoms and the rise of entertainment conglomerates to gobble up the so-called "little guys" in order to allow commercialism to run amok and for the notion of selling out one's soul for personal gratification and financial gain to become part of the American way of life. Let's face it: Isn't all that what has created the current climate of political division and personal derision?

"The stuff of Pulitzer Prizes and Tony Awards it's not, but Funny Valentines - with its wacky concepts, comical and misguided moments and over-the-top characters - harkens back to the Barn's legacy of well-produced comedies that go down well with heaping helpings of tender roast beef and scalloped potatoes and a peanut butter pie that will make you want to slap your mama, whether or not you are a Southerner (seeing as that phrase seems to be a regional colloquialism, don't you know). It's not even the best of the genre, of course, but Funny Valentines gives Wilkinson to work her directorial magic to create some onstage hilarity and to draw some genuinely effective performances from her five-member cast.

"Led by the charming Brett Cantrell as a klutzy and cartoonish nebbish of a children's book writer, the comedy goes down relatively easy, but thanks to the 1970s ambience created by the director and the rest of her creative team (which includes costume designer aka "audience favorite" Lydia Bushfield, who does double duty as the matriarch of said comedy) craft an aesthetic that quickly whisks you away on the time-travel machine activated by the machinations of that magic floating stage, great comic timing and one perfectly-delivered "Impostor!" line that helped to capture the decade's zaniness and pop culture zeitgeist with aplomb."

2014 First Night Honoree Ginger Newman stars in the role that Andrew Lloyd Webber might have written for her if he'd had the pleasure of meeting her, as she takes on the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, which enters its second weekend of performances at Donelson's The Larry Keeton Theatre. "I'm ready for my close-up." Unforgettable words from an iconic movie turned into a celebrated musical in its Middle Tennessee premiere at The Keeton. In addition to Newman, director Clay Hillwig's cast includes Justin Boyd as Joe Gillis, Tonya Pewitt as Betty, and Randall Cooper as Max.

Based on the 1952 Billy Wilder film, the musical is set in Hollywood, 1949 Webber's musical features the memorable tunes "As If We Never Said Goodbye," "With One Look" and the title tune.

Here's our take on the production: "There is an iconic scene in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of Sunset Boulevard - based on the memorable film by Billy Wilder - in which Norma Desmond returns triumphantly (in Norma's myopic view of life since the talkies spelled an end to silent pictures, in which she made her fortune with her expressive face) to Paramount studios for an impromptu meeting with Cecil B. DeMille on the set of Samson and Delilah. Impressively played by Ginger Newman in the Nashville debut of Sunset Boulevard at The Larry Keeton Theatre, Norma is beautifully clad in haute couture, generating star power and unaware that she has slipped into obscurity for the most part, her legions of fans decimated by time and the general vagaries of life.

"When Norma is recognized by Hogeye, a light operator on set, who implores her to stand so that he may bathe her in a bright spotlight of remembrance and adoration and as she does as she is directed, the chattering classes of crew members and extras, technicians and artists fall silent, enraptured by the presence of the quintessential diva, caught up in the decades-long fascination with the lady in question who was so much more than just an actress. Norma Desmond, the star, has come back home to claim her rightful place in the firmament of Hollywood legends and stars.

"The scene serves as mere prelude to Newman's magnificent rendition of "As If We Never Said Goodbye," Norma's anthem of enduring celebrity that speaks to a simpler time when our stars were bigger than the industry that begat them. Without question, it is the most stirring and absolutely stunning scene in Sunset Boulevard, directed by Clay Hillwig. Costumed by Tanis Westbrook, Newman's Norma has never looked more elegant or more beautiful. Ginger Newman - much like the character she plays - is every inch the star and it is her performance that should provide theater audiences reason enough to buy a ticket to The Keeton's production of Sunset Boulevard."

Tennessee Women's Theater Project concludes its critically acclaimed run of the provocative and compelling run of Lauren Gunderson's Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight, which closes Sunday at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theatre. Evelyn O'Neal Brush stars in the title role of Gunderson's play, which is based on the real life story of Emilie du Châtelet, a scientific genius of 18th century France. Women of her era were considered too simple-minded to understand mathematics or physics, but Emilie produced work ranging from a groundbreaking paper on the nature of fire (the first by a woman ever published by the Paris Academy), to a celebrated and still-used translation and commentary on Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. She was married to a nobleman of the court of Louis XV, and took a series of lovers, including the writer and philosopher Voltaire. In the play, Emilie is returned from the afterlife to recount and defend her life. With an ensemble of four actors, she replays her interactions with family, colleagues and lovers, and examines her unanswered questions about science and philosophy, life and love. 2012 First Night Honoree - and TWTP artistic director - Maryanna Clarke directs an ensemble that includes Obadiah Ewing-Roush, Britt Byrd, Evan Taylor Williams and 2015 First Night Honoree Kaul Bluestone.

We were mesmerized by the play during its opening weekend, writing: "Evelyn O'Neal Brush's bravura performance is reason enough to see Tennessee Women's Theater Project's production of Emilie: La Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight, but clearly it's Lauren Gunderson's play itself that should sell tickets. Emilie (as we will refer to the play from here on out - at least to the conclusion of this review) is an engaging treatise on the life and times of the mathematician, physicist, writer and critic, whose supreme intellect and prodigious literary output during the Age of the Enlightenment made her both notorious and admired at a time when women were thought of primarily as chattel.

"Directed by TWTP artistic director Maryanna Clarke, Emilie is a spirited and imaginative journey (there's time travel, which guarantees glorious interplay of time and space, with anachronisms galore!) through the life of du Chatelet, whose friends and admirers included some of the leading figures of the Enlightenment - and although she was involved with a number of notable male figures of the time, Gunderson focuses primarily upon her relationship with Voltaire, the witty and urbane, yet monstrously egotistical historian, philosopher, playwright and wit. Gunderson writes her characters with a literary flair that is underscored by her genuine understanding of them - both as people and as historic figures - that ensure they captivate within the strictures of the play she has written for them."

Nashville Children's Theatre, one of the nation's best known and most beloved theaters for younger audiences, pays tribute to an American heroine in Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, running through March 13. The time is December 1, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama, and Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refuses to surrender her seat on a public bus to a white man. Her arrest proved to be a tipping point in American history, inspiring Montgomery's African-American citizens to organize in non-violent protest under the leadership of a new young pastor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association staged a 13-month boycott of Montgomery's public transit system that resulted in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down segregation on public buses as unconstitutional. Director Jon Royal's cast includes Rashad Rayford, Tamiko Robinson Steele, Lauren Frances Jones, Denice Hicks, Bobby Wyckoff, Latrisha Talley and James Rudolph.

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