Review Round-up: JAGGED LITTLE PILL, THE 39 STEPS, MRS. KRISHNAN'S PARTY and THE REVOLUTIONISTS

The national tour of Jagged Little Pill at TPAC’s Andrew Jackson Hall

In the aftermath of experiencing the Nashville premiere of Jagged Little Pill — the musical inspired by and featuring music from Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album of the same name, other songs written by her and including two created expressly for the production, and featuring a compelling, biting and challenging book by Diablo Cody — one cannot help but lament the show’s abbreviated three-performance run at TPAC’s Andrew Jackson Hall.

Judging from the response from the opening night audience, it seems clear it could have sustained a longer run, so passionate and deafening was the standing ovation at curtain — and so palpable the crowd’s immersion in the story and the music (which is a contemporary evisceration of literary tropes about the seemingly perfect suburban American family) from its very first moments.

To put it more succinctly: Drop any plans you may have and get your tickets to see Jagged Little Pill now — you have about 12 hours or so to immerse yourself in this stunning musical about the challenges of life that is at once heartbreaking and movingly hopeful. How it failed to win the Tony Award for best musical in 2021 is beyond me, die-hard fans of Moulin Rouge notwithstanding.

Brilliantly staged by Diane Paulus, with scintillating and vibrant movement and choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the production is innovative and exhilarating. With the onstage band (situated above the action) performing Tom Kitt’s sublime orchestrations, and featuring an electrifying cast, all of whom deliver heart stopping performances, Jagged Little Pill is musical theater at its most expressive and transformative. Justin Townsend’s lighting design is gorgeous, while Ricardo Hernandez’s scenic design and Lucy Mackinnon’s video design create the perfect settings for the almost three-hour production that is guaranteed to hold your rapt attention.

Julie Reiber’s performance of Mary Jane Healy is revelatory and she is given extraordinary support from Teralin Jones (a Nashville native) as Frankie, Benjamin Eakeley as Steve and Dillon Klena (whose brother Derek created the role) as Nick. Jade McLeod, as Jo, and Allison Shepard, as Bella, are commanding in their portrayals.

Diane Bearden Directs Entertaining The 39 Steps For Playhouse 615

Director Diane Bearden and her terrific ensemble of four nimble actors score yet another hit for Playhouse 615 with their production of The 39 Steps, the sometime raucous, altogether great fun and tremendously entertaining comic adaptation of the John Buchan novel/Alfred Hitchcock film by Patrick Barlow.

Closing out its three weekend-run with a trio of sold-out performances at the Mt. Juliet theater, Bearden and her cast – Philip David Black, Erin-Grace Bailey, Barclay Randall and Alyssa Borg – bring the suspenseful adventure to life with a minimum of props and set changes, allowing the audience to put their own imaginations to work which guarantees their rapt attention to all the onstage histrionics of four very capable performers at the top of their collective game.

Fast-paced and uproariously funny, the script of The 39 Steps is inspired by Buchan’s novel and Hitchcock’s iconic 1935 film treatment, blending the best of both to create a spy mystery that is at once outlandish, easy-to-follow (most of the time) and somehow manages to appeal to every audience member. Bearden’s direction is both elegant and over-the-top and her four actors have the time of their life in the process.

Playhouse 615 is definitely on a roll of late and we can’t wait to see what lies ahead for the company in 2024 and beyond.

Mrs. Krishnan’s Party Delights Nashville Audiences

Looking for a theatrical adventure that's both immersive and improvisational? Be sure to go to Mrs. Krishnan’s Party, onstage at TPAC's Andrew Johnson Theatre March 6-9.

New Zealand-based Indian Ink Theatre Company's production is great fun, heartfelt and hilarious, telling a universal story of love and acceptance -- and finding one's place in the world -- that will make you feel at home right from the first moments when James aka DJ Jimmy J (played by the altogether charming and amazingly adept Justin Rogers), Mrs. Krishnan's student boarder, takes you to your seat, all the way through to the post-show conviviality of a meal (that's cooked onstage right in front of you) shared among a coterie of strangers who at the end of a sprightly 90 minutes have become friends.

Kalyani Nagarajan, the consummate actor who becomes Mrs. Krishnan (a role she inspired playwrights Jacob Rajan and Justin Lewis to create the world of Mrs. K) in a winning performance, will dazzle you with her effortless ease. Obviously, Nagarajan and Rogers, old friends from drama school, trust each other tremendously and together create a theatrical experience you won't soon forget!

The script by Justin Lewis (who also directs) and Jacob Rajan perfectly captures the camaraderie of the two characters and offers insight into their onstage relationship with which every audience member can identify, and the fast-paced action keeps audience member thoroughly caught up in their onstage antics.

Colorful, imaginative, entertaining and engaging, Mrs. Krishnan’s Party is quite unlike anything you may have experienced in a theater before.                  

WIT Debuts With Two Performances of Lauren Gunderson’s The Revolutionists

Women in Theatre (WIT) Nashville makes a rather auspicious debut with its production of Lauren Gunderson’s The Revolutionists, directed by Stephanie Dillard and starring Tanya Anderson, Meredith Daniel, Gabby Kapanka and Patricyonna Rodgers. With just two performances in its all-too-brief run at Darkhorse Theater (which has provided a physical home to so many Nashville theater companies over the years we could never provide an exhaustive list of them), we cannot urge you to rush to see it, but we can hopefully encourage you to be on the lookout for the company’s future productions.

Having recently seen Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, which opens with the beheading of doomed royal Marie Antoinette, we were primed for Gunderson’s somewhat raucous fever-dream of a comedy about four women gathered to ponder their fates and to consider the treatment of women in the world, the juxtaposition of art and activism during the reign of terror, and sisterhood that was missing from the French Revolution’s aims of “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”

Dillard’s quartet of actors have a grand time bringing Gunderson’s vividly written and altogether clever characters to life (Nashville audiences should be well familiar with them by now, thanks to the 2018 presentation of the play in a memorable production from the late and lamented Tennessee Women’s Theater Project, directed by 2014 First Night Honoree Maryanna Clarke, and a 2022 staged reading from Nashville Repertory Theatre directed by Beki Baker, who recently staged another critically acclaimed [which means I liked it] Gunderson play at Lipscomb University Theatre).

The four women’s palpable chemistry and the brisk pace in which their individual stories are told ensure that audiences remain engaged and enthralled throughout the play’s two hours of often outrageous comedy and delightfully anachronistic references and actions. There’s a lot of history to be unpacked in this play-within-a-play of sorts and Dillard and her actors do a noteworthy and eminently watchable job of storytelling. We’re only sorry that the abbreviated one weekend run won’t allow more theater aficionados to respond to their efforts.

Daniel is terrific as playwright Olympe De Gouge, in whose salon (or, rather, her imagination) the play takes place, and Rodgers is the commanding and confident Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle. Kapanka is the earnest Charlotte Corday, “the young assassin” who stabs Jean-Paul Marat to death in his bathtub, and Anderson very nearly steals the entire show as the ribbon-loving, cake-eating Marie Antoinette, whom she plays with charm, humor and an above-it-all sense of adventure that makes her an audience favorite!

And in case you are confused by the frequent references to and the theatrical in-jokes about the musical theatrical behemoth Les Miserables, might I remind you that it is not set during, nor is it about The French Revolution.

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