MUSIC CITY CONFIDENTIAL: What's This Week's Gossip?

At long last, Music City Confidential is back to help you get caught back up on all the talk of the town - all the news that's fit to print about the Nashville theater community - and to immerse you in the minutiae of life in Theater City (a term we've been trying to copyright since we were in junior high with Thespis, Aristophanes and Martha Wilkinson).

Seems like, a week after the performance (give or take a few hours), people are still talking about SuperMAS, the latest semi-annual cabaret-type performance from the talented women of MAS Nashville (Erin Parker, Laura Matula, Melodie Madden Adams, Cori Laemmel and Megan Murphy Chambers). In my post-SuperMAS haze of retrospection, while writing my review, I forgot to write about two of my favorite parts of the show: the ladies' dazzling and captivating performance of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab," which was nothing short of spectacular - seriously, it's been playing on an endless loop in my brain for six days and counting. But not in a super-annoying way. Yet.

The other "unwritten-about" highlight: the MAS ladies' take on "Girl Crush," the Nashville-born and bred country tuner from Little Big Town that seems the perfect opportunity for MAS to list their very own crushes, which included Oprah Winfrey (Nashville's own Oprah, who got her start in TV on Channel 5), Dolly Parton, and Mandy Moore (at least she's the only Mandy I could come up with to fit the lyrics sung by Mrs. Laemmel), among others (I am foggy this morning, I admit). It was great fun, although I still find the melody schmaltzy and whiny, but thanks to the update lyrics by the MAS quintet, it was a highlight of the evening.

Again, we ask: Where's the save-the-date card for the next offering from Nashville's smashingly creative and ultra-talented quintet of entertainers? We'll keep you posted!

Meanwhile, back at the Jamison (Jamison Hall at the Factory in Franklin), we were surrounded by a bevy of amazingly charming and talented people, including our bff Aurora Daniels (who has remains in that long-running role ever since that bad review of a dance concert we wrote back in the days when people were buying answering machines for the first time and you had to pay for ATM cards; Aurora was the producer and we were the critic who broke her heart when we publicly admitted the show sucked) and a quartet of powerhouse entertainers who were dishing during halftime: Meggan Utech, Piper Jones, Libby Hodges and Melinda Doolittle. They were swell seatmates, as it were, and it was particularly fun talking to Meggan, since it was our first chance to get to know her. If you haven't yet seen her in The Ray Legacy at Studio Tenn (which shutters this weekend) or failed to catch her in Street Theatre Company's In the Heights, heed our advice and seek her out. She's remarkable.

The aforementioned Melinda Doolittle asked if she'd see us at the next High School Musical Theatre Awards, coming up May 14 at Lipscomb University's Collins Auditorium...she'll once again be mistress of ceremonies for the grand affair (after a full day spent leading masterclasses for the assembled high school lovers of all things musical theatre). I'll be back as a presenter (thanks, Kari Smith!); last year, Melinda and I asked the audience to take pictures and post them on social media with the hashtag #melinda&jefmademedoit...what fun it was to search out the pictures with every permutation of that hashtag you could possibly imagine. I promise something easier to spell (that superfluous F in my name is only there to cause trouble and weigh me down!) in 2016.

EXCLUSIVELY CONFIDENTIAL: Our pal Angela Gimlin, who co-hosted Midwinter's First Night with us at the Boiler Room Theatre a coupla years back and has been the stalwart of our red carpet before and since, gave us the scoop on Inebriated Shakespeare - you know, where the actors and audience get shit-faced and pay homage to the words of the Bard - and is happy to report that the troupe plans a comeback later this year! "Though Inebriated Shakespeare had been planned to start back up in the spring," she reports, "we lost our venue with the closing of Kavanagh's. But we are happy to report we have a venue and will be holding auditions for A Midsummer Night's Dream in the fall."

Leslie Eiler Thompson and Casey Hebbel reunite on Thursday, May 5, for the upcoming Any Song Will Do Cabaret at Cannery Row, Suite 204, Nashville: Roles We'll Never Do, A "Choose Your Own Adventure" Musical Theater Cabaret. Leslie performs (and directs!), Casey performs (and choreographs!) and Tyler Osborne is on the bill, presumably to perform and to be charming, as we all know him to be. Curtain for the cabaret is at 7:30 p.m. and the gig is a pay-what-you-can event for Blood: Water (a community, motivated by the love of Christ, to create lasting change in Africa. The organization serves local leaders and joins them in the fight to end the HIV/AIDS and water crises. Since its launch in 2004, Blood:Water has worked alongside more than a dozen African organizationsto bring clean water and HIV/AIDS support to more than 1 million people in 11 countries.) For more information, go to www.anysongwilldo.com.

With Nashville's burgeoning cabaret scene continuing to expand, here's another opportunity to insinuate yourself into the action.

Neil Simon's Rumors is revived on the magic floating stage at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, featuring (among others) Martha Wilkinson and Derek Whittaker, who were onstage in the raucous farce during its first production at The Barn in 1991. Lydia Bushfield directs a cast that also includes Joy Tilley Perryman (-Jones), Bradley Moore, Linda Speir, Charlie Winton, Jenny Norris Light, Chase Miller and Everett Tarlton.

We recently interviewed Martha (did you know she's won nine - count 'em, nine - First Night Awards and she was a 2015 First Night Honoree) and Derek (who performed at the 1990 First Night Awards with some MTSU pals) about their history with the show and unbeknownst to us, Derek's history is rather, how do we put this?, lengthy: he's been in every Barn production of the show since 1991 - including 2001, 2010 and 2016.

Here's a particularly compelling memory Derek shared from the 2001 show: "Performing Rumors during September of 2001 was a defining moment in my life. We had a bought house on the morning of 9/11, just a few hours after the Twin Towers had fallen. Talk about focus. If we didn't know how to do it before, we learned how to do it that day. The cast included Kelly Lapczknski, Richard Daniel, Bobby Wyckoff, Kim Thornton Nygren, Juli Ragsdale Jacobson,Joseph Collins, Lydia Bushfield and Carter Thrower. That morning was all about not trying to think about New York and what might lie ahead. That was the same show that dear Juli was BOTH EARLY and then LATE for the SAME entrance. She was playing "Cassie" my wife. She entered early, when we still had about a page of dialogue to cover. She marched down the aisle, saw the panic in our eyes, realized she was early and then turned and left the way she came in. So we continue the scene for a couple of minutes, get to her entrance and she's nowhere to be found. Nowhere. To. Be. Found. I might have broken character and laughed openly onstage that show, I don't recall. Sweet Juli also lit her hair on fire in the dressing room during the show one night, on one of the votives we lit to remember the fallen. That whole run was pretty unique. Carter had a heart attack and had to be replaced by two different actors, one of whom was Eric Tichenor, our director. Eric also did the closing night performance as Claire, because Kim lost her voice. We went into work that night and witnessed an emergency 'drag-ectomy' just hours before curtain. Several of us might have had a shot of bourbon or three prior to going onstage that night, but I can't remember who."

So you may be asking who was onstage in the 2010 production of Rumors? Trin Blakely, Mike Baum, Lydia Bushfield, Charlie Winton, Judy Tamble, Ben Dawson, Christina Moyers and Kelly Lapczynski.

With the number of local theater companies continue to skyrocket (at last count, the number was around 137) and this time of year being the usual period for announcing upcoming seasons, everyone has had their eyes peeled for each subsequent announcement. You all do wait breathlessly for our missives about new season offerings, don't you? Of course you do.

Well, then, gentle readers, you may wonder what happens when one company's announcement includes a show that is included on yet another company's list of new season offerings? Obviously, whoever makes their announcement earliest tends to get bragging rights.

This season, it's happened with Noises Off, the notable Michael Frayn farce that's been a popular choice for local companies over the years (we've seen previous productions from Nashville Rep, Chaffin's Barn and Circle Players, among others) and once again, two companies listed it as part of their 2016-17 seasons, namely the aforementioned Nashville Rep and ACT 1, both of whom originally had the show occupying the same October theatrical turf. When Nashville Rep announced its upcoming season Monday - which includes The Last Five Years (which I directed last summer for VWA Theatricals, starring Delaney Amatrudo and Luke Denison), Doug Wright's Posterity (which was developed as part of the Ingram New Works project at Nashville Rep), the eighth annual presentation of A Christmas Story and the Lorraine Hansberry classic A Raisin in the Sun.

ACT 1 is announcing its 2016-17 slate of shows via a piecemeal announcement on social media this week, starting off with Arsenic and Old Lace (directed by Daniel DeVault) taking up that same October plot of land we'd originally been told Noises Off would be occupying. Only time will tell - well, they have until Friday, we suppose - if ACT 1 still plans a production of Noises Off later in the season (our guess is Spring 2017, if it remains on the playbill). The second show in ACT 1's season is Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind, directed by Dave McGinnis.

It all fuels speculation, of course, throughout the chill of early spring: Who's doing what, when and where? (Just so's you know, I'm directing My Fair Lady at The Larry Keeton Theatre next February/March 2017; I've already written my review and have it in the cue for 2/17/17) And I love the anticipation of a long and drawn-out announcement schedule, but let's face facts: everyone knows long before the news is made public and reporters - aka people like me - are released from the embargo on the news and are free to report it. Last Friday night, I listened silently as people at the table discussed Nashville Rep's slate of 16-17 shows, moving on to a discussion of ACT 1 and Circle Players' offerings. I remained silent, as I was contractually required to do (well, not really, but kind of) and pretended my pasta was the most intriguing plate of food ever to appear on a tabletop in Nashville.

Surely, there's got to be a better way! Meanwhile, everyone's talking about what's coming up in the new season even as the professional companies hold sway over their audition processes (Nashville Shakespeare Festival claims the latter part of this week, while Studio Tenn did their thing last week, and Nashville Children's Theatre and Nashville Repertory Theatre's auditions are on the horizon).

While Irina Sundukova and Robert Stone continue to debate the merits of The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls on Facebook, let me just reiterate: I loved the recent Actors Bridge production, a part of its nine-year collaboration with Belmont University and directed by Leah Lowe, chair of the theater department at Vanderbilt. Is the script perfect? No, but so few are anyway, why should that matter? Was the production perfect? Just about. It featured an amazingly forthright ensemble of actors (Rachel Agee, CJ Tucker, Austin Williams, Madeline Marconi, Jonna McCarthy and Ashley Joye), an eye-popping design aesthetic (kudos to Paul Gatrell, Richard Davis, Jessica Mueller and Taylor Thomas) and was edgy, surreal and downright fun.

Which leads us to this latest, gleefully anticipated, offering coming up from Actors Bridge: Nate VS. Rachel, a one-night only performance that sets up Nate Eppler and Rachel Agee to go toe-to-toe onstage at Actors Bridge Studio at Darkhorse Chapel, to raise money for production expenses for the world premiere of Eppler's The Ice Treatment, in which Agee may or may not be playing an infamous U.S. figure skater whose career went up in flames back in the 20th century. Does anything else sound more fun? Nope! Go to www.actorsbridge.org for tickets; space is limited for this unique theatrical endeavor and you won't want to be caught making up memories because you weren't right there, smack dab in the middle of it all.

SAVE THE DATE: The First Night Honors, in which we pay tribute to the movers and shakers - and memory-makers - of the Tennessee theater community will be held this year on September 25, 2016. We have an impressive group of folks on our short list this year and you'll want to be on-hand for all the drama and theatrics that exemplify First Night. We'll be making the big reveal of honorees in mid-July at our new place of residence, which is big enough to host a part for 150 of our closest friends. We'll keep you posted on the details.

The First Night Honors' Most Promising Actors Showcase, which we'd hoped to host May 1, has been rescheduled due to the fact that our life is in a state of both flux and upheaval, what with our move and starting a new career, will be held later this summer. We'll keep you posted on that news, as well.

Among the MPA Class of 2016, which represents the very best younger actors in Tennessee colleges, universities and secondary school drama programs, are: Sheridan Hitchcox, Adam LaPorte, Ann Marie Bagge, Nick Mecikalski, Katie Bays, Amanda Leigh Bell, Nelson Tilley, Austin Williams, Caitlyn Porayko, Jack Williams, Chris Lee, Grace Williams, McKenzie Wilkes, Andrew Forbes, Morgan Conder, Kyle O'Connor, Haley Sue Pearson, Darby Kolwyck, Lissa deGuzman, Rebekah Lecocq, Neal Buckley, Cate Jo, Sarah Zanotti, Arik Vega, Steven Griffin, Payton McCarthy and Brandon Hoyt.

Looking for something to do this weekend? Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest concludes its three-weekend run at The Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson on Saturday night. Britt Byrd, Katherine Morgan, Michael Adcock, Amber Boyer, Rebekah Stogner and Kurt Jarvis star, Jim Manning did the set, Stella London the lighting, Allan Stokes the sound, with Mary L. Hankins as stage manager. Jamie London and Larry Keeton produced.

Oh, yeah, I directed. The show's sweetly evocative and pretty damn funny: it's about one young woman's attempts to rehabilitate her reputation by taking home the crown of Miss Firecracker on one particularly hot July weekend in 1974 (which just happens to be the summer before my senior year in high school, so the music is great!)...come see us before all the theatrics are packed away.

Oh, I forgot to address a query I received on Facebook last week about what prompts me to write about some shows and apparently ignore others, inquiring minds want to know. Well, it comes down to this: it depends on time, if I am made aware of a show happening (it kinda pisses me off when I have to troll Facebook to unearth details about shows when everyone within the sound of my voice or the sight of my words knows how to reach me with details), and what I perceive to be the quality of said shows. I make 99% of my own editorial decisions and the only time someone else weighs in is when they receive a complaint about my rather "salty" use of the English language. In other words: if you want publicity for your theatrical endeavor, just ask nicely and I'll likely give you a plug, and I will make every effort to review your show if you get in touch at least three weeks before the show happens and I can possibly squeeze it into an already overflowing datebook, diary or schedule...and if I believe you won't be crying/griping and whining all over the place if you get a less than rave review. Be mature about this business of show and we can talk.

Don't even get me started about audition notices/listings (already I have this pushing sensation between my eyes that leads me to believe my brain is about to explode).

So get off my jock and play nicely amongst yourselves. Otherwise, you may rest assured that I will hear all about it. And I may even share that knowledge with the rest of the world.

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