Critic's Choice: If Life's A Cabaret, Why Aren't You At The Theater?

Winter's apparently over - it's in the mid-70s, balmy and windy, as we write this - and even before Spring pops up all over, there's an amazing amount of good theater to be found in the Nashville area. In fact, there's so much to choose from that you have absolutely no excuse staying alone in your room. Instead, in the wise and wonderful words of Sally Bowles, life is a cabaret and you're far more likely to find that out in the darkened confines of a theater, where magic and mayhem is bound to happen.

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!

And if you're one of those people who plans ahead (they do exist, I am assured by people in the know), you might take a look at our weekly compilation of all things theatrical to be found in Nashville's Theater Calendar: /nashville/article/Nashvilles-Theater-Calendar-3716-20160307

2015 First Night Honoree Darryl Deason directs Memphis: The Musical, the next offering at Woodbury's Arts Center of Cannon County, starring Melinda Paul and Michael Adcock as Felicia Farrell and Huey Calhoun. Memphis: The Musical runs March 11-26, featuring choreography by Regina Wilkerson Ward, with music direction by Robert Hiers.

Memphis is set in the places where rock and roll was born in the 1950s: the seedy nightclubs, radio stations, and recording studios of the musically-rich Tennessee city. With an original score, it tells the fictional story of DJ Huey Calhoun, a good ol' local boy with a passion for R&B music and Felicia Farrell, an up-and-coming black singer that he meets one fateful night on Beale Street. Despite the objections of their loved ones (Huey's close-minded mama and Felicia's cautious brother, a club owner), they embark on a dangerous affair. As their careers rise, the relationship is challenged by personal ambition and the pressures of an outside world unable to accept their love.

Performances run March 11, 12, 18, 19, 25 and 26 at 7:30 p.m. and on March 13 and 20 at 2 p.m. In addition to the two leading players, the cast includes Michael McGee, Jordan McCullough, Quantavius Rankin, Susan Arnold Walsworth, Bill White, Zavior Phillips, Laurie Burger, Sam Wright, Shayna Brown, Maryam Mohammed, Julie Kelley, Eli Ragland, James Bessant, Tim Kelley, Kristin Taylor, Mckenzie Turney, Zoe Mulraine, Toyin Edogun, Mary Grace Bouldin and Alexander Sanford.

Tickets are $15 with discounts available for students and seniors and can be purchased by calling (615) 563-2787 Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m., or online at www.artscenterofcc.com and (subject to availability) at the door one hour prior to show time.

In Crossville, at Cumberland County Playhouse, the company opens its latest on Friday night: Larry Shue's The Nerd, starring the inimitable Daniel W. Black and Jason Ross, running through April 16.

This unpredictable, side-splitting comedy from the author of The Foreigner centers on the dilemma of one Willum Cubbert, a young architect, who is visited by Rick Steadman - a man he's never met but who, years before, saved Willum's life. Rick turns out to be an incredibly inept "nerd" who outstays his welcome with a vengeance, leading to one uproarious incident after another. Need tickets? Go to www.ccplayhouse.com and go have some fun at the celebrated Cumberland County Playhouse.

Cori Anne Laemmel's The Theater Bug moves to Franklin's The Factory for a weekend of performance of the original Bug musical Showmance, presented by Studio Tenn at Jamison Hall, playing March 11-13. Want some details? Go to www.thetheaterbug.org and learn all about Laemmel's acclaimed theater company - a breeding ground for inspiring and talented young performers - supported by the people who love them. Great fun for audiences of all ages, Showmance is an original musical written specifically for child actors by The Theater Bug's director and founder, Cori Anne Laemmel. The production will feature an all-youth cast of approximately 40 children.

2011 First Night Star Award winner Cathy Street bids farewell to Music City with her final directorial effort for the eponymous Street Theatre Company: In The Heights, playing through Sunday, March 20. 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. 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.

Here's what we had to say about the opening night performance: "The first thing you are apt to notice in STC's 11th-season opener, when entering the theater at Bailey Middle School, is Randall Tye Pike's extraordinary set design which transforms the stage into the Washington Heights neighborhood - overseen by the saintly Abuela Claudia (Nancy Allen, glowingly maternal as the block's adopted grandmother) and punctuated on three corners by businesses that have served the people in the barrio for multiple generations: Usnavi's bodega, Daniela's "unisex beauty salon" and Rosario's Car and Limousine Service - taking every audience member on a transformative trip to New York to become immersed in the culture and longevity of the neighborhood.

"Randy Craft's five-man orchestra perform - perched up high above the action that transpires down upon the stage - the show's score impeccably, providing strong accompaniment to the onstage ensemble. Steven Steele's lighting design guarantees a warm effect on the action, making the story come alive amid the heat of the July 4th weekend during which the plot takes place. Jessica Mueller's costume design, without question, helps the cast find their characters as she clothes them in garments that perfectly suits each person.

"Tosha Pendergrast's choreography is electric and athletic, helping to keep the action moving onstage with inventive and imaginative dancing that allows each person onstage to look their best and to infuse the proceedings with a Latin beat that's sure to have you, the average audience member, moving in your seats and exiting the theater with a certain style to your step.

"Street's direction is sharply focused, while remaining thoughtfully and engagingly heartfelt, ensuring that In The Heights is delivered to her audiences with the same care and creativity as every show she's been involved with in her remarkable decade in Nashville theater. Her casting choices are on-target and may represent her true legacy in Nashville theater: She's introduced a whole new half-generation (if a generation is considered 20 years, of course) of actors to local stages, assuredly casting them in the right roles that have highlighted their talents to make certain audiences would follow them from one company to the next, one show to the next."

In The Heights is onstage at Street Theatre Company's current home - Bailey Middle School in East Nashville - through March 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.

Continuing this weekend, 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.

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.

And while we're talking about ACT 1: ACT 1 One Act Wednesdays are back again, with a performance on March 16 at Nashville's Darkhorse Theater, with curtain at 7:30 p.m., after what we are told was a stupendous (yes, stupendous, y'all!) on Wednesday night!

Among offerings this month are Christopher Durang's The Actor's Nightmare, a short comic play directed by Kristin Parsons. It involves an accountant named George Spelvin, who is mistaken for an actor's understudy and forced to perform in a play for which he doesn't know any of the lines. Patrick Kramer stars as George, with Bethany Champion as Meg, Tammy Sutherland as Sarah, Jenni Cadaret as Ellen and Douglas Goodman as Henry. Gray Matter, written by Jeanette Farr and directed by Ron Veasey, takes a look at what can happen when we get call out on our prejudices. The play features veteran actor Adele Akin and TSU student and actor Stewart Romeo, who show us that people are not always what they seem. Finally, ACT 1 welcomes local playwright Kenley Smith directing his-one act play, Resolve to Die a Nameless Death, featuring Pat Riley as Sean, Christopher Bosen as Larry, K.C. Bragg as Moe and Emily Eytchison as Tim.

Tickets are $5 cash at the door - and if you bring your One Act program to ACT 1's production of Lysistrata, you get $5 off your regular priced ticket. Talk about a deal!

Opening last Friday night at Brentwood's Towne Centre Theatre - and running through next weekend - was 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 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 through March 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.

There is so much good theater abounding on area stages, that it's could be compared to 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!

Our reaction to the show? "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."

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