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Evans Donnell, a once and future critic

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Evans Donnell

About Evans Donnell

Evans Donnell wrote reviews and features about theater, opera and classical music for The Tennessean from 2002 to 2011. He was a webmaster, writer and editor for the original StageCritic.com site (2004-2011) as well as now-defunct ArtsNash.com and NashvilleArtsCritic.com sites from 2012 through 2018, where he additionally wrote about film. Donnell has also contributed to American Theatre magazine, The Sondheim Review, Back Stage, The City Paper (Nashville), the Nashville Banner, The (Bowling Green, Ky.) Daily News and several other publications since beginning his professional journalism career in 1985 with The Lebanon (Tenn.) Democrat. He was selected as a fellow for the 2004 National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and for National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) arts journalism institutes for theater and musical theater at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in 2006 and classical music and opera at the Columbia University School of Journalism in 2009. He has also been an actor (member of Actors Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA), founding and running AthensSouth Theatre from 1996 to 2001 and appearing in Milos Forman's "The People vs Larry Flynt" among other credits.

Film Review: Vital ‘Living,’ and its ‘Ikiru’ Inspiration, on Beautiful Display at Belcourt, Nashville’s Top Cinema House

January 27, 2023 by Evans Donnell Leave a Comment

 

Bill Nighy as Williams in “Living” (Photo by Ross Ferguson courtesy of Number 9 films / Sony Pictures Classics)

Belcourt Theatre gives us many delights, and this weekend is no exception, as 2022’s  “Living” and the 1952 film that inspired it, Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru,” screen at Nashville’s preeminent home for world cinema of every era.

You don’t have to be an expert on, or even have seen the latter (which partly found its roots in the 1886 Leo Tolstoy novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”) to enjoy the former, but what a wonderful opportunity to marvel at quality film-making. They’re even shot in the same aspect ratio, and both are set in early 1950s. They also center on the person of a civil servant, but “Living” (directed with passionate care by Oliver Hermanus with Oscar-nominated script by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, author of the novels “The Remains of The Day” and “Never Let Me Go”) does not merely flatter with imitation – it stands on its own as a beautiful, sensitive work.

Bill Nighy as Williams in “Living” (Photo by Ross Ferguson courtesy of Number 9 films / Sony Pictures Classics)

In the gray of a Britain still recovering from WWII we meet Williams (Bill Nighy), a veteran civil servant, whose stooped frame and hoarsened voice have been weighed with cares professional and personal for far too long. He will go on as he long has until a medical diagnosis takes him in search of life’s vibrancy before his all-too-short time is done.

Nighy’s distinguished stage, TV and film career long ago marked him out as one of the English-speaking world’s finest character actors. He received a Best Actor Oscar nod this week (his first Academy Award nomination). It’s richly deserved for the performance he turns in, taking us on a journey through look, gesture and intonation that slowly reveals Williams in the most poignant ways possible.

Aimee Lou Wood as Margaret Harris in “Living” (Photo by Ross Ferguson courtesy of Number 9 films / Sony Pictures Classics)

The supporting cast, led by Alex Sharp playing a new employee in Williams’ department named Peter, and Aimee Lou Wood as Margaret, briming with vitality and serving as Williams’ beacon to a better path, are superb. The same can be said for period-perfect efforts of Production Designer Helen Scott and Costumer Designer Sandy Powell as well as the colors and framing captured by Cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay,

But the beating heart of “Living” remains Nighy’s bravura performance. The bittersweet joy of Williams’ late-life blooming is captured completely and we are left with much to savor.

Bill Nighy as Williams in “Living” (Photo by Jamie D. Ramsay courtesy of Number 9 films / Sony Pictures Classics)

“Living” opens today at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville; it also opens today at the AMC Thoroughbred 20 in Franklin. “Ikiru” plays Saturday night at the Belcourt as well. The film is rated PG-13 for some suggestive material and smoking by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

Filed Under: Arts

An Appreciation: Tennessee Playwrights Studio Reveals Humanity Beyond Headlines In ‘That Woman’ Presentations

July 19, 2022 by Evans Donnell

Photo by Beth Gwinn

Sixty years ago politicians’ private lives were basically off-limits as far as most of the press was concerned. The 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was a handsome, charismatic figure with a beautiful and cultured wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and two adorable children named Caroline and John. Their family image, molded and preserved by Mrs. Kennedy and others, and that of his short-lived administration, would soon be simply referenced using the name of JFK’s favorite musical — “Camelot” — in the aftermath of his Nov. 22, 1963, assassination.

Sixty years ago Betty Friedan was putting the finishing touches to a manuscript that became the best-selling 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique,” arguably launching what later became known as the “second wave” of American feminism. One of the quotes from that book is as follows: “The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.”

Such creative work was on powerful, persuasive display in June during performances of “That Woman: The Monologue Show” and “That Woman: The Dance Show” at Darkhorse Theater and (for the monologue show only) The East Room courtesy of Tennessee Playwrights Studio and co-producer Angela Gimlin. Several of Nashville’s finest creatives conceptualized, wrote, produced, directed, designed, stage managed, crafted and performed pieces that reach beyond decades of headlines, books and broadcast documentaries regarding President Kennedy’s extramarital affairs for the humanity, and individuality, of the women either revealed or alleged to have been involved with him as well as his wife of 10 years.

I didn’t have the privilege of seeing the shows in person, but TPS made video recordings of the monologue show in both venues and the dance show at Darkhorse. That allowed me to watch, and enjoy, some wonderful performances, where the words became a “Spoon River Anthology” of selected women in JFK’s life, and the dances became vibrant expressions of 20th Century events and lives that have fascinated many over the past six decades.

That Woman: The Monologue Show

Darkhorse Theater Cast (Photo by Rick Malkin)
The East Room Cast (Photo by Rick Malkin)

In the monologue show (skillfully overseen by director Stephanie Houghton, founder of Nashville’s Gadabout Theater Company) the artisans working with director and cast included Rachel Agee (Script Editor), Renee Brank (Stage Manager), Bethany Dinkel (Costumer), Kristen DuBois (Lighting Designer), Alexis LaVon (Sound Designer), and Lauren Wilson (Graphic Designer).  

All this show’s performances represented the characters in their complex and complicated humanity: There were no impersonations, just evocations. Most of those performing had written their words from researching the people their characters were based on, but even those who hadn’t written the words played their parts with great commitment to emotional truth. 

Conveying each character as they sat or stood onstage obviously isn’t possible here, but some lines from the monologues may give readers a taste of what was so realistically conveyed to the audience. Those lines are accompanied by the names of those who wrote and brought the characters to life:

Inga Arvad: “Listening is truly a dying art. The need to be heard often outweighs the desire to understand. I know this to be true. I lived my life listening more than I talked.” {written by April Hardcastle-Miles; performed during the run by her and Silva Riganelli}

Ellen Rometsch: “Take it to the grave. That’s what I’ll do. There is no reason for you to ring my phone or knock on my door. I’ll never talk. What’s past is past and it will stay that way.” {written by Mary McCallum; performed during the run by her and Audrey Venable}

Blaze Starr: “Loving powerful men might have been part of my life, but it wasn’t my life. It wasn’t who I am. I was art. I was fantasy. I was furs and satin and sequins. I was boobs and booze and flashes of red hair.” {written and performed by Angela Gimlin}

Mimi Alford: “I said this in my memoir, and I will say it to you: ‘I am Mimi Alford, and I do not regret what I did. I was young and swept away and I can’t change that fact….This book represents a private story, but one that happens to have a public face. And I do not want the public face of this story — the one where I will be remembered solely as a presidential plaything – to define me.'” {written and performed by Molly Breen}

Priscilla “Fiddle” Wear: “I’m no fool. I knew I was never going to be his wife or advisor but that’s not how power works, is it? Those aren’t the only ways to influence history.” {written by Nettie Kraft; performed during the run by Ibby Cizmar and Karla Dansereau}

Jill “Faddle” Cowan: “We were close. I cared for him deeply. I accepted him as a human. How do you help a president through depression? You listen. You encourage. And eventually…he helps himself.” {written by Alicia Haymer and performed by Sofia Hernández Morales}

Marilyn Monroe: “I’ve always been comfortable in my own skin, regardless of what anybody says. They say plenty, naturally. They think it too. You’re thinking it right now.” {written and performed by Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva}

Mary Pinchot Meyer: “I just wanted to help. I wanted to be in the room. I longed to be in the know. I dreaded being another boring, stupid housewife. I am smart and thoughtful and kind.” {written and performed by Dianne DeWald}

Judith Exner: “You don’t have to like me, you don’t have to approve of me. But when you make your judgment, you have to know the truth about me.” {written and performed by Elizabeth Turner}

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: “I am a passionate woman, my dear. I’m more passionate than anyone will ever know. In fact, I am sometimes overcome by my ability to feel despite my best efforts not to. Perhaps that’s why I appreciate art so much. And history. It’s safe to feel passionate about these things.” {written by Ang-Madeline Johnson; performed during the run by her and Madison Gunn}.

As the cast took their bows following the 90-minute show Helen Reddy’s clarion call “I Am Woman” accompanied the cheers and applause. How appropriate: “That Woman: The Monologue Show” had indeed roared.

That Woman: The Dance Show

In the dance show, choreographers included Molly Breen, Caitlin Del Casino, Brandon Johnson, Thea Jones, Cornell Kennedy, Jodie Mowrey (who also served as Director of Choreography), Schuyler Phoenix, Rachel Simons, Brittany Stewart, and Emma Williams. Breen directed the show, working alongside such creatives as Caitlin Del Casino (Costumer), Kristen DuBois (Lighting Designer), Alexis LaVon (Sound/Projection Designer), Shannon J. Spencer (Stage Manager), and Lauren Wilson (Graphic Designer).

It featured a wide array of classic and modern movements with an equally broad range of musical accompaniment highlighted by contributions from such Nashville talents as Noah Rice, Mickey Rose, Jen Bostick, Melanie Bresnan, Heidi Burson, David Curtis and Jonell Mosser.

The dancers were a very diverse group of performers that included Breen as Marlene Dietrich, Caitlin Del Casino as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Thea Jones as Ellen Rometsch, Jodie Mowrey as Mary Pinchot Meyer, Schuyler Phoenix as Blaze Starr, Rachel Simons as Inga Arvad, Nikki Staggs as Tempest Storm, Brittany Stewart at Judith Exner, Autumn Wegner as Marilyn Monroe, Emma Williams as Inga Arvad, Brandon Johnson, Preston Weaver and Shawn Whitsell as JFK/ensemble with Jim Manning as Joseph Kennedy/J. Edgar Hoover.

So many different experience levels for the performers, so many different dance and music styles, different moods shifting not just from section to section but often beat to beat — among several highlights there was the tragic grace of Emma Williams’ “Marilyn,” the satirical silliness of the “Hoover Interlude” sequences from Jodie Mowrey and Jim Manning, the sweeping tumult of Williams’ “November 22, 1963,” complete with projections of Walter Cronkite’s dramatic assassination coverage, and last, but certainly not least, the power of Breen’s affirmative coda, “You Know Who You Are.”

Filmmakers like to speak of their work as collaborative, but of course they’re not the only ones whose outputs are the labor of many hands. What astonishes (but given the talent level doesn’t surprise) is “That Woman: The Dance Show” was seamlessly woven together in terms of the choreography and performances. There was no “dip” in either quality or energy throughout the 100-minute, two-act piece. It was moving, entertaining, thrilling, stunning and beautiful to watch.

A Thankful Wish

If you didn’t see these shows in their inaugural productions here’s hoping these two creative, thought-provoking, emotionally complex, entertaining shows will return to the stage soon. How lucky we are to have so many gifted artists and artisans in our community giving us works such as these.

And Some Extras…

Some photos from the monologue show:

Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin
Photo by Rick Malkin

A taste of the movement in “That Woman — The Dance Show” is available through the video below that was shot to preview the piece online:

Some pictures from the dance show:

Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Photo by Beth Gwinn
Logo courtesy Tennessee Playwrights Studio

Filed Under: Arts, Dance, Features, Reviews, Theater

Film Review: Warm and Funny ‘Phantom of the Open’ Is a Dreamer’s Delight

June 28, 2022 by Evans Donnell

Photo from “The Phantom of the Open” by Nick Wall (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

“No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Lord Darlington in Act III of Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play “Lady Windermere’s Fan (A Play About A Good Woman)”

“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” — Portia in Act 5 of William Shakespeare’s 1596-97 (circa) play “The Merchant of Venice”

No deep dive into the quotes above – just know the cinematic story of British folk hero Maurice Flitcroft in Sony Pictures Classic’s “The Phantom of the Open” borrows directly and indirectly from those words.

Photo from “The Phantom of the Open” by Nick Wall (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

Flitcroft (played with his usual still-waters-run-deep brilliance by Oscar-winner Mark Rylance)  is a crane operator in England’s industrial north (Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, to be exact) who earnestly believes in not only looking at but shooting for the stars. That’s the message he’s preached for years to twin sons Gene and James (the exuberant Christian and Jonah Lees), who regularly distinguish themselves on the dance floor, and to stepson Michael (a well-measured performance by Jake Davies), now a college grad and part of management at Maurice’s employer.

And good deeds? When Maurice (sounds like “Morris”) met Jean (another in a long line of strong showings by Oscar-nominee Sally Hawkins), she was a single mother. It wasn’t long after WWII, when such a situation was usually scandalous in the misnomer that was “polite society.” Maurice didn’t judge — he accepted Jean and Michael with open arms.

What turned Flitcroft from a good-hearted anonymous guy to national folk hero? In 1976 the 46-year-old decided to enter The Open Championship. So what, you say? What if I was to tell you he did so without ever playing a single round of golf before he entered qualifying, and set a record by scoring 121 for 18 holes? Okay, given the fact he’d never played that’s easy to believe. What’s not so easy, and what added greatly to his life (and the movie) is what followed that unforgettable moment in golf history.

Photo from “The Phantom of the Open” by Nick Wall (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

Yes, there were those in the golf establishment that weren’t pleased at all, as typified by pompous Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews official Keith Mackenzie (played to fuming comic perfection by Rhys Ifans). But Brits love their eccentric sportsmen (like Eddie the Eagle, to name just one). And so, it turns out, did some folks in the United States. But for that and more, you’ll need to watch the film.

The movie is a good deed in itself during our current era of upheaval. No, it’s not some heavyweight “Why didn’t they wait until awards season to release this?” movie, though I wish the British and American film academies cared more about such feel-good films than they do.

“The Phantom of the Open” has good acting, a well-paced, warm and funny script by actor/writer Simon Farnaby (who has a golfing cameo in the feature) based on the 2010 book he wrote with sports journalist Scott Murray on Flitcroft, and vivid directing flourishes from Welsh actor-turned-director Craig Roberts. Kudos also go to Kit Fraser’s often-inventive cinematography, Jonathan Amos’ crisp editing and period-perfect contributions from production designer Sarah Finlay, Isobel Waller-Bridge’s music (with musical supervision by Phil Canning), Sian Jenkins’ costumes and Tara McDonald’s hair and makeup.

Its release in our area is quite limited; hopefully one can see it at a theater, but if not, watch/stream/rent it when it appears in home-friendly formats. One doesn’t have to care about golf (or any sports) to root for Flitcroft and feel quite happy after this 106-minute love letter to dreamers is over.

Photo from “The Phantom of the Open” by Nick Wall (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

“The Phantom of the Open” continues this week in Franklin at AMC Thoroughbred 20 and in Murfreesboro at AMC Murfreesboro 16. It’s rated PG-13 for “some strong language and smoking” by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). Click here for more info and tickets to showings at those theaters and others elsewhere.

Filed Under: Arts, Film, Reviews

Film Review: Mirren, Broadbent and Company Ennoble ‘The Duke’

May 5, 2022 by Evans Donnell

Photo by Mike Eley, BSC. Courtesy of Pathe UK. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

For decades the Brits have seemingly cornered the market on films about eccentrics. real and imagined; they typically produce entertaining cinema around such unconventional folks with equal parts humor and poignancy. With Kempton Bunton, the Don Quixote of 1961 Newcastle, “The Duke” adds another entertaining movie to that character-fueled canon.

Bunton (Jim Broadbent) is the voice crying in the wilderness of post-World War II Britain for better treatment of pensioners and war veterans. His perpetual campaign for the downtrodden and forgotten is, at the time the film is set, centered on the mandatory television license fee required of anyone owning a TV set in the United Kingdom (a practice that still funds the BBC).

His activism has resulted more than once in incarceration, and between his protests and prolific (but commercially unsuccessful) playwrighting his long suffering wife Dorothy (Helen Mirren) has basically reached breaking point. Her husband promises to change his ways, but that promise seems broken quite soon when Kempton finds himself at the center of a headline-screaming story about the theft of Francisco Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery (so far the only time that august place has had a painting stolen since it opened in 1824).

Photo by Mike Eley, BSC. Courtesy of Pathe UK. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Richard Bean and Clive Coleman’s sweet-natured and nimble script largely encompasses the true story that followed, including Bunton’s trial and its aftermath. That doesn’t mean it’s historically accurate in all respects, of course: the real story, should you choose to look for it, is readily available in various online articles. But in just 96 minutes we get a vivid portrait of the social divisions and personal conflicts – such as a family tragedy that drives much of Kempton’s thoughts and feelings – that led to a case which ultimately changed British law.

Roger Michel’s direction makes the most of location and the script’s fast pacing, but it’s the performances of the cast that make this more than a celluloid anecdote. Broadbent, Mirren, Fionn Whitehead as Kempton and Dorothy’s son Jackie, Anna Maxwell Martin as Dorothy’s employer and Matthew Goode as Kempton’s defense barrister are all very believable and likeable. They ennoble “The Duke” with their work, and make the film more pleasing than it might otherwise have been.

“The Duke” opens Friday (May 6) in Nashville at Regal Green Hills Stadium 16 and in Franklin at AMC Thoroughbred 20. It’s rated R for language and brief sexuality by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). Click here for more info and tickets to showings at those theaters and others elsewhere.

Filed Under: Arts, Film, Reviews

Theater Preview: Pipeline-Collective Joins With NECAT For Live Theatrical Event That Offers 12 Hours ‘Outside Of Here’

September 22, 2021 by Evans Donnell

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Imagine a live theatrical broadcast/online experience that offers 32 of Nashville’s finest actors with a “Groundhog Day“-like twist on the COVID age. Pipeline-Collective Producing Artistic Directors David Ian Lee and Karen Sternberg have imagined such an event and it becomes reality on Saturday, Oct. 2 from 10 AM Central to 10 PM Central on NECAT (Comcast channel 9, ATT U-verse channel 100), Nashville’s Education, Community and Arts Television Network, as well as live streams.

“What we are attempting to achieve through this world-premiere work by Claudia Barnett is unlike anything else that’s being produced at a national level,” Lee recently emailed Stage Critic as he, Sternberg, Lee’s co-director Melinda Sewak, and rest of their “Outside Of Here” creative team prepared for the unique and ambitious offering. “It will be a straight 12-hour performance, with Karen on set throughout. In that time, she’ll perform the same two-person scene with dozens of scene partners.

“Claudia has written a piece designed to be replayed as a time loop, so each viewer’s experience will be different. An earlier viewing will be different from a viewing late in the day, and someone who sticks around for multiple iterations of the scene will appreciate the subtleties and the overall arc of the piece,” Lee explained. “This has been a logistical puzzle to assemble at every level – we’ve been developing the play since the spring, we’re working in a new medium (television and livestream), we’re bringing together 32 performers, we’re assembling an agile technical team, and we’re doing it all while implementing stringent Covid safety protocols. Because of the livestream, the piece can be viewed from anywhere with wifi!”

In addition to the Nashville broadcast viewers can access the livestream from anywhere through Pipeline-Collective’s Facebook page or NECAT’s livestream. The performance is free to watch though donations will be shared among the artists working on the piece. Click here to support the “Outside Of Here” artists.

Joining Sternberg in the cast are Rebekah Alexander, Matthew Benenson Cruz, Rona Carter, Joel Diggs, Rosemary Fossee, Galen Fott, Diego Gomez, Denice Hicks, Josh Inocalla, Jonah Jackson, Josh Kiev, Ang Madaline-Johnson, Leslie Marberry, Mary McCallum, Kate McGunagle, Nat McIntyre, René Millán, Sabrina Moore, Beth Anne Musiker, Gerold Oliver, Eric Pasto-Crosby, Eve Petty, Taryn Pray, Natalie Rankin, Elliott Robinson, J.R. Robles (also the show’s technical director), Jordan Scott, Tamiko Robinson Steele, Shawn Whitsell, Garris Wimmer, and Sarah Zanotti. NECAT’s technical team consists of Samantha Burns, Alex Keenum, and Will Ybarra; Phillip Franck is production design consultant; Eric Franzen is costume designer; Eli Van Sickel is sound designer; production support is provided by Alex Drinnen and David Johnson; Sejal Mehta, M.D. is COVID Protocols Consultant and Lee is the production’s certified COVID compliance officer.

Those working on it said inspiration for “Outside Of Here” came not only from life in the COVID era but from such pre-pandemic works as the 1993 Bill Murray hit film mentioned earlier; Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame,” with its characters apparently trapped at world’s end (and which includes the line “Outside of here it’s death” from which the play’s title is drawn); and the masterful absurdist repetitions of Eugène Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano.”

The project also gave Pipeline-Collective a chance to build on relationships and virtual storytelling techniques developed in The Salon, its new works program. “We moved The Salon online from the beginning (of the pandemic) and focused on local and national community-building with playwrights, directors, and actors,” Sternberg said in a press release. “It’s this community of more than 300 people that inspires us, that pushes us creatively, and that provides us more support than we can ever return. Being able to realize this massive yet safe project with dozens of local performers and technicians after so much time physically apart is deeply gratifying. And working with Claudia Barnett, who’s one of the most poetic playwrights we know, has been the perfect fit for this project.”

Part of that emphasis on safety means no live audience at the NECAT studios. It also means the show’s fully vaccinated actors won’t share the same physical space until performance day. “That’s part of the magic, the unpredictable element. That’s where planning and inspiration collide and create something compelling,” Sternberg noted.

Pipeline-Collective has kept up with the latest safety guidelines issued by the CDC, Metro Nashville, and the performing artists’ unions such as SAG-AFTRA and Actors’ Equity Association. In addition to everyone working on “Outside of Here” being fully vaccinated, every person in the building will be masked for the duration of the performance unless they’re on camera.

“Outside Of Here” is produced in collaboration with Cameron McCasland, who serves as the Director of Content and Member Relations for NECAT. “We’re so thrilled to partner with Cameron on this project,” said Sternberg. “He has an unwavering enthusiasm for unorthodox work, and we’re eager to branch out beyond conventional theatrical spaces. The PEG Studio at NECAT is literally the only place where we could make what we’re trying to make. We consider ourselves so fortunate to have found such a great creative partner.”

“Innovation is key to the work we do,” Lee concluded. “We believe in theatrical magic on a shoestring budget, and ‘Outside Of Here’ is stretching us in many ways. We’re a theatre company. We’ve never produced something that’s one-part theatre, one-part endurance art, one-part multicamera live television event. This is going to be wild.”

https://www.pipeline-collective.com/support-the-artists

Filed Under: Arts, Theater, TV

August Wilson’s ‘Jitney’ With Kamal Angelo Bolden & Brian Anthony Wilson Kicks Off 2021 Summer Shakespeare Festival

August 9, 2021 by Evans Donnell

The Nashville cast of August Wilson’s “Jitney” (Photo by Michael Gomez www.gomezphotography.com)

Nashville, Tenn. – August Wilson’s “Jitney” opens Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s 2021 Summer Shakespeare Thursday with two well-known TV and film actors leading an accomplished cast, an award-winning and highly regarded director and a five-time Grammy winner providing original music.

Local Black-owned theater company Kennie Playhouse Theatre is collaborating with Nashville Shakes to produce the show, which runs Aug. 12-22 at oneC1TY in Nashville, and Sept. 16-17 at Williamson County Performing Arts Center at Academy Park in Franklin, Tenn.

The cast of “Jitney” – as the production’s press release notes, “an unflinching look into the stories and struggles of Black life in 1970’s Pittsburgh through the lens of a group of tight-knit, independent cab, or jitney, drivers” – includes Emmy-nominated Kamal Angelo Bolden of TV’s “The Resident”, “Chicago Fire”, and “Rosewood” playing Booster and Brian Anthony Wilson, a prolific TV and film actor widely known for his role on TV’s “The Wire”, playing the jitney station owner, Becker. The play will also feature Kyra Davis as Rena and Nashville-based professional actors Gerold Oliver, Clark Harris, Pierre Johnson, Elliot Winston Robinson, and Jarvis Bynum. Kenny Dozier, Artistic Director of Kennie Playhouse Theatre plays the role of Turnbo. Rashad Rayford and Ethan Jones will join the cast as Booster and Shealy respectively in Franklin. Fisk University instructor Persephone Felder Fentress completes the team as the stage manager.

Directing “Jitney” is the award-winning, veteran director Chuck Smith. He is a 30-year Resident Director at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, a Resident Director at the Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe in Sarasota, Fl., and a founding member of the Chicago Theatre Company. Smith has numerous directing credits across the nation and has won several awards over the decades including a Chicago Emmy and the African American Arts Alliance’s Lifetime Legacy Award.

Five-time Grammy Award-winning bassist Victor Wooten recently joined the creative team. Wooten, also a songwriter and record producer who was ranked among the Top 10 Bassists of All Time by Rolling Stone Magazine, will compose original music for the show.

The creative team of “Jitney” also includes local set designer Shane Lowry, who is building the versatile set for both shows at the Summer Shakespeare Festival (their production of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” runs Aug. 26-Sept. 12 at oneC1ty and Sept. 18-19 at the Williamson County Performing Arts Center), costumes are designed by Hazel Robinson, lights by Janet Berka, props by Pixie Convertino, and fights choreographed by David Wilkerson.

“Jitney” and “Twelfth Night” mark the summer festival’s return after a one-year hiatus because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The festival has protocols in place to protect cast, crew and patrons during performances. NSF last presented a lovely production of “The Tempest” in 2019. Nashville Shakespeare also produced two wonderful educational films for students earlier this year adapted from “Romeo and Juliet” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

Summer Shakespeare Festival is free, but donations of $10 or more are strongly encouraged for the continued operation of the esteemed nonprofit professional company that began in 1988 with a TheateRevolution production of “As You Like It” in Centennial Park. Patrons can bring their own blanket or chairs, purchase reserved “Noble” seating for $40 or buy $100 VIP Royal Packages, which include reserved parking, comfortable reserved seating, and dinner catered by Bacon & Caviar Gourmet Catering.

Go to ticketsnashville.com to purchase those seats/packages. “Jitney” is rated MA for mature audiences. The Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s programs are funded in part by the Tennessee Arts Commission, Metro Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Filed Under: Arts, Theater

Theater Review: The Loving Grace of Good Art in Nashville Rep’s Relevant ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’

February 16, 2020 by Evans Donnell

Karen Sternberg as Blanche (photo for Nashville Repertory Theatre by Michael Scott Evans)

“The world is violent and mercurial – it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love – love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.” Tennessee Williams to James Grissom (author of “Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog”), New Orleans, 1982

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9, New International Version

Eric D. Pasto-Crosby as Stanley and Karen Sternberg as Blanche (photo for Nashville Repertory Theatre by Michael Scott Evans)

There may be nothing new under the sun, but the loving grace of good art creates the welcome illusion of originality. It’s welcome because that illusion encourages us to see and hear in ways we often don’t when confronted with something that feels familiar. (That familiarity simply breeds contempt, according to Geoffrey Chaucer and so many others down the centuries…)

Such loving grace is powerfully present as one watches Nashville Repertory Theatre’s current production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” That means it’s easy to forget you read the 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play in school, that you’ve seen stage presentations in the past or watched the altered shape it took as a 1951 film, as you watch the vibrant work now on searing display in Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Johnson Theater.

Karen Sternberg as Blanche, Eric D. Pasto-Crosby as Stanley and Tamiko Robinson Steele as Stella (photo for Nashville Repertory Theatre by Michael Scott Evans)

Director Nat McIntyre clearly understands the challenge of bringing such a venerated 20th Century American drama to a 21st Century stage. “The trap that must be avoided is to present a masterpiece from the past as a piece of art hanging in a museum,” he writes in his play program note. “That lets us off the hook. And Tennessee Williams was certainly not interested in letting anyone off the hook.”

First, McIntyre has assembled a team of artisans to make the play’s world come alive in setting, costumes, lighting and more. Gary C. Hoff (in his 20th season at the Rep) gives us a richly detailed set for the humble Elysian Fields apartment where Stanley and Stella Kowalski live, love, laugh and fight; Matt Logan’s costumes are the perfect fit of fabrics, colors and contours from seven decades ago; Phillip Franck’s lighting design (particularly during the play’s climatic scene)  morosely illuminates the action without intruding on it; and Kyle Odum fits the syncopated sounds of “Streetcar” seamlessly into the piece. In mentioning those offering their talents to this show I’d be remiss to leave out Nettie Kraft, who oversees the fine dialect work for this production – good dialect work illuminates and engages, while bad distracts and destroys believability, so it’s vitally importance to the performance – and the very believable fight choreography of Carrie Brewer.

James Crawford as Mitch and Karen Sternberg as Blanche (photo for Nashville Repertory Theatre by Michael Scott Evans)

Second, he’s cast well in all roles. James Crawford makes a heartbreakingly sensitive Mitch; Matthew Benenson Cruz’s energy as Pablo is perfect; James Randolph and Merrie Shearer give us complete characterizations as Steve and Eunice, the upstairs neighbors and landlords of the Kowalskis. Connor Weaver and Melinda Sewak ably appear in more than one guise during the proceedings, but most notably as the doctor and nurse in the final scene; and as the Young Collector, Brooks Bennett is the personification of pure youth.

The primary challenge to playing Stella Kowalski is that her husband Stanley and sister Blanche DuBois can easily suck all the air out of the room; to believe she can more than handle breathing that same air, to show the steel behind Stella’s smile, is no easy task. That’s why Tamiko Robinson Steele (no pun intended from that previous sentence) is just what Stella needs – a superb actor that shows every shade of Stella’s humanity and makes us understand why her character not only survives but thrives in a human hothouse.

Eric D. Pasto-Crosby as Stanley (photo for Nashville Repertory Theatre by Michael Scott Evans)

Eric D. Pasto-Crosby brilliantly conveys the brutishness (down to his walk and stances) and tenderness in Stanley. We don’t condone much of what he says and does – including the abhorrent violence he inflicts on Stella and Blanche – but we understand his tremendously flawed humanity through the lens of Pasto-Crosby’s performance. His pain and rage is palpable, but so is his love and need for Stella.

The highest compliment this one-time actor can give players is that I don’t see them in the role. That is most certainly true of the utterly incredible Pipeline-Collective Co-Producing Artistic Director Karen Sternberg in her Nashville Rep main stage debut as Blanche; she dives so deeply into the troubled, crumbling psyche of her character that I forgot while watching that I’d ever seen her in anything else or even met her anywhere else. There’s so much to praise about her performance, but I think all well-deserved plaudits for her portrayal stem from the way she believably, patiently, excruciatingly builds Blanche’s fantasy-to-lunacy descent. Even those with just a passing “Streetcar” familiarity know what’s coming – “Whoever you are – I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” – and yet, when it comes out of Sternberg’s mouth in a tone of self-aware, fatalistic resignation, the effect is a stunning thunderclap to our collective spirit.

Brooks Bennett as the Young Collector and Karen Sternberg as Blanche (photo for Nashville Repertory Theatre by Michael Scott Evans)

In an essay published in The New York Times four days before “Streetcar” had its 1947 Broadway premiere (headlined “Tennessee Williams on a Streetcar Named Success”), Williams asked, “Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that’s dynamic and expressive – that’s what’s good for you if you’re at all serious in your aims.” McIntyre and his Nashville Rep colleagues have made a very dynamic and expressive “Streetcar” that pays proper tribute to the masterful talent that wrote it while gracing us with their good and oh-so-humanely-relevant work.

Tamiko Robinson Steele as Stella and Eric D. Pasto-Crosby as Stanley (photo for Nashville Repertory Theatre by Michael Scott Evans)

In addition to those mentioned in the review the following are significant contributors to this production: assistant director Claire Hopkins; stage manager Teresa Driver; assistant stage manager Kristen Goodwin; production director Christopher L. Jones; props master Amanda Creech; scene shop foreman R. Preston Perrin; master carpenter Tucker Steinlage; costume manager Lori Gann-Smith; wardrobe supervisor Lakeland Gordon; costume technician Lauren Elizabeth Terry; rentals manager Emily Irene Peck; artistic associate Erica Jo Lloyd; Maggie Jackson and Karch Abramson, run crew.

Nashville Repertory Theatre’s production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” continues through Sunday. February 23 in Johnson Theater at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. Click here for more information and to buy tickets.

Filed Under: Arts, Reviews, Theater

Theater Review: A Handsome ‘My Fair Lady’ Revival Tour

February 6, 2020 by Evans Donnell

Shereen Ahmed as Eliza Doolittle (on stairs) and Company in The Lincoln Center Theater tour production of Lerner & Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” (Photo by Joan Marcus)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Lincoln Center Theater national tour of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s “loverly” classic “My Fair Lady” is in handsome residence at Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Jackson Hall this week. The revival helmed by acclaimed director Bartlett Sher has quite a bit to recommend it (including Michael Yeargan’s set design of colorful compositions and Catherine Zuber’s Tony Award-winning costumes).

Not every choice or moment is perfect – despite what some have written and said, this is no “perfect musical,” in any incarnation, since no human endeavor (including theater criticism) is without flaws. But those imperfections are not so great as to make Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s brilliant “Pygmalion” Edwardian satire (aided or hindered, depending on one’s taste, by the 1938 Gabriel Pascal-produced film adaption of the play Shaw wrote in 1912) anything less than platinum from Broadway’s Golden Age.

How to handle (a slight nod to another Lerner and Loewe show) this “Lady?” In a recent National Public Radio interview Sher (who among other assignments directed a well-received revival of “South Pacific,” for which he won a Tony, and the recent Aaron Sorkin-adapted smash of “To Kill a Mockingbird”) said, “Whenever you do one of these musicals, you have to look at the immediate significance of the time you’re in and why are you doing it right now.” Sher’s take centers on the strength of Eliza’s character, very fitting for this (or any) age.

And who plays the indomitable Eliza in this tour? Shereen Ahmed, who understudied (and eventually played) the part at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre while working as an ensemble member, stars in that role now. She has a beautiful soprano voice that’s just as capable in pursuit of earthier low notes as it is soaring to hit the high ones. And she’s no one’s flower trod in the mud, conveying the inner strength that shines through Eliza whether she’s a Cockney on fire in “Just You Wait” or when she emerges exultant (“I Could Have Danced All Night”) from her run through Higgins’ tortuous educational gauntlet. I’d like to see what she’d make of a role created in a more modern vein (watching her I wondered what she’d make of Dina in “The Band’s Visit,” for instance – Katrina Lenk was stupendous but I think Ahmed could do that and many other roles justice as well).

Kevin Pariseau as Colonel Pickering, Laird Mackintosh as Professor Henry Higgins and Shereen Ahmed as Eliza Doolittle in The Lincoln Center Theater tour production of Lerner & Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Laird Mackintosh makes a decent Henry Higgins, and his voice when singing certainly has much more to recommend it than the “talk on the beat” performance Rex Harrison made famous in the original stage production and the 1964 Warner Bros. film – among other roles he’s been the lead character in the unstoppable “Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway, which is after all a sung-through experience. He’s quite good conveying Higgins’ passion for “the majesty and grandeur of the English language,” and the shrillness that accompanies petulant man-child moments (such as in “I’m an Ordinary Man” and “A Hymn to Him”) for his character is strong. But there are moments when I wanted to see the aspects of an imperious martinet more clearly in his characterization – among other things, that makes parts of “The Servants’ Chorus” even more ironically entertaining.

Adam Grupper is always believable and utterly entertaining as Alfred P. Doolittle. Whether he’s romping through “With a Little Bit of Luck,” the “Get Me to the Church on Time” number that spotlights Christopher Gattelli’s ingratiating choreography, or providing his character’s oh-so-original morality musings, Grupper’s energy, delivery, gestures and reactions fit every moment like the well-tailored morning suit rags-to-riches Alfie is ultimately doomed to don.

Other standouts in the ensemble include the engaging characterizations offered by Leslie Alexander as Mrs. Higgins and Wade McCollum as Professor Zoltan Karpathy – both obviously relish their roles and reinforce the notion that we’ll embrace characterizations when the actors thoroughly embrace their characters. There’s solid work from other supporting players, including Kevin Pariseau as Colonel Pickering, Sam Simahk as Freddy Eynsford-Hill (a pleasant rendition of “On the Street Where You Live”) and Gayton Scott as Mrs. Pearce. I also salute the ensemble’s delightfully droll “Ascot Gavotte” among their other moments onstage – the program says that ensemble includes Mark Aldrich, Rajeer Alford, Colin Anderson, Polly Baird, Mark Banik, Kaitlyn Frank, Henry Byalikov, Michael Biren, Shavey Brown, Anne Brummel, Mary Callanan, Jennifer Evans, Nicole Ferguson, Juliane Godfrey, Colleen Grate, Patrick Kerr, Brandon Leffler, Nathalie Marrable, William Michals, Rommel Pierre O’Choa, JoAnna Rhinehart, Sarah Quinn Taylor, Fana Tesfagiorgis, Michael Williams and John T. Wolfe.

Adam Grupper as Alfred P. Doolittle and Company in The Lincoln Center Theater tour production of Lerner & Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Music Director John Bell’s orchestra for the Nashville portion of the tour includes local musicians Amy Helman, Avery Bright, Paul Nelson, Patrick Atwater, Matt Davich, Robby Shankle, Randy Ford, Andrew Witherington, Andrew Golden, Garrett Faccone, Harry Ditzel, Tara Johnson, Bill Huber, Phyllis Sparks, Kelsi Fulton and Paul Ross. It’s tough to bring local and out-of-town musicians together for such a short run, but always worth it – “canned” music never sounds as good as actual playing in the pit.

Let’s also send thanks to associate set designer Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams, lighting designer Donald Holder, sound designer Marc Salzberg. associate director Sari Ketter, associate choreographer Mark Myars, technical supervisor Larry Morley, company manager Jeff Mensch, production stage manager Donavan Dolan and any others connected to this show. It’s easy to forget that there are many gifted hands needed to present such large-scale productions.

(Warning: A finale spoiler follows. If you don’t want to know, stop reading now.)

There’s been plenty of debate about Lerner and Loewe’s ambiguous ending for “My Fair Lady.” As I’ve said in other reviews, I prefer that audience members make up their own minds whether Eliza stays with Higgins, becoming romantically involved with him, or merely comes to say goodbye, before either starting life with Freddy or on her own.

Over to you, Mr. Sher: “Shaw hated the idea that they will ever, ever end up together,” he told NPR. “He was anti rom-com of any kind. He was an incredible feminist, fought hard for all kinds of equality.”

JoAnna Rhinehart as Mrs. Eynsford-Hill, Sam Simahk as Freddy Eynsford-Hill, Shereen Ahmed as Eliza Doolittle, Kevin Pariseau as Colonel Pickering and Leslie Alexander as Mrs. Higgins in The Lincoln Center Theater tour production of Lerner & Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Okay. I prefer that she doesn’t become Higgins’ lover. But as Sher stages it, after the final lines of the musical (and as Loewe’s score crescendos to its triumphant end), Eliza walks to Higgins, puts her hand on his chest, then turns, steps in front of him, and after a brief stop walks off the turntable set leaving Higgins with a rather “Aw, shucks” look on his face as the stage lights dim.

Sher’s staging of the finale isn’t ambiguous, but that would be alright if it wasn’t also an abandonment of the play’s world. I’m sure Sher and his colleagues have an answer, but watching that moment my instant reaction was “Why not leave the way she came?”

The Lincoln Center Theater national tour of “My Fair Lady” continues through Sunday (Feb. 9) at Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Jackson Hall. For more information on the tour click here; to buy tickets for the Nashville run click here.

The following video offers a look at the cast that’s playing in Nashville:

Filed Under: Arts, Reviews, Theater

Theater Review: The ‘Ravaged Wasteland’ of Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s Intriguing ‘Macbeth’

January 23, 2020 by Evans Donnell

Mariah Parris as Lady Macbeth and Sam Ashdown as Macbeth (Photo by Rick Malkin)

“What things in our lives tempt us to deny the humanity in others, and by doing so, throw away part of our own? Is what remains, in a post-civilization world where so much of our humanity has been lost, even more precious? What, in such a ravaged wasteland, could lead us to abandon those last cherished scraps of humanity? And what would be the consequences?” – Director David Wilkerson in a program note for the Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s “Winter Shakespeare” production of William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”

David Wilkerson and his Nashville Shakespeare Festival colleagues have stared into the post-apocalyptic abyss of a “Macbeth” where the title character’s “black and deep desires” play out in a ravaged wasteland brilliantly realized by set designer Jim Manning. It’s a world that intrigues, not least because it provokes the unsettling feeling this might possibly become our so-called civilization’s future.

Sam Ashdown as Macbeth and Jordan Gleaves as Banquo (Photo by Rick Malkin)

This bleak “cockpit” (to borrow from the Bard’s “Henry V”), first replicated on the Troutt Theater stage through Sunday (Jan. 26) before proceeding to venues in Franklin, Murfreesboro, Tullahoma and Clarksville, is the space where some gifted players remind us of Shakespeare’s imaginative power. In a play like “The Tempest” that imaginative power creates Prospero’s legacy; in “Macbeth” it virtually destroys a society.

When Nashville Shakes visited this work in 2013 under the direction of former Nashvillian Matt Chiorini it was an intoxicating brew of spellbinding imagery, music (including Nine Inch Nails tunes) and movement that stimulated the senses. Those senses still get a workout watching this production, but what was other-worldly then is very, very worldly now. Each age must have its Shakespeare, and other than the obvious light his work casts on unchanging human nature, the fact that such different takes on this familiar play by the same troupe can each succeed within the mere span of seven years reminds us the Bard is basically adaptable anytime, anywhere and in any way.

Elyse Dawson as Macduff and Mariah Parris as Lady Macbeth with Ensemble (Photo by Rick Malkin)

The Rick Malkin pictures that accompany this review convey a scorched earth set of human “progress”: its centerpiece is a tower of mankind’s cast-off follies, including a doorway of stripped plastic and a satellite dish that long ago ceased to receive any signals. Add Jocelyn Melechinsky’s inspired costumes – most notably the head-to-toe garb and gas masks worn by the witches (Delaney Keith, Natalie Rankin and Kit Bulla) – to that desolate backdrop and the vision of this “Macbeth” is instantly one of dissipation and desolation.

Sam Ashdown as Macbeth (Photo by Rick Malkin)

At the heart of this nightmarish vision stands the title character played by Sam Ashdown. Ashdown makes Shakespeare’s verse his own language, and never forgets that audience and actor are on a journey instead of merely meeting at a destination – in his performance the whisper of Macbeth’s tragic flaws clearly and believably builds to a roar by the time he has that fateful encounter with Macduff (every inch a great warrior in the talented hands of Elyse Dawson). Macbeth’s “dagger of the mind” seems all too real when Ashdown delivers it, a suitably startling shock to the system from which he and we never totally recover; his “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…” unfolds with such resigned despair that despite his blood-steeped sins we’re truly touched by its plaintive dispatch.

Mariah Parris as Lady Macbeth (Photo by Rick Malkin)

Mariah Parris is the perfect partner to Ashdown as Lady Macbeth, making her character’s arc from calculating resolve to sorrowful madness seem so palpable that we truly grieve when her husband says, “She should have died hereafter.” According to more than one scholar Lady Macbeth was based on Gruoch ingen Boite, the granddaughter of an ancient king and the mother of another, whose first husband was the King of Moray. That husband and allegedly her offspring, a King of the Scots, were murdered; in this production a scene of Lady Macbeth mourning the loss of an infant serves as a powerful preamble to her words, actions and possible motivations.

The Witches (Delaney Keith, Natalie Rankin, Kit Bulla) face Macbeth (Photo by Rick Malkin)

In this production’s viewpoint gender is by attributes, not physicality, so male and female actors play roles of different genders. That, as well as multiple roles assumed by several company members (for example, longtime Nashville Shakes performer Brian Russell has four roles, including the ill-fated Duncan), would be confusing without actors capable of committing to clear choices for each of their parts; the aforementioned performers along with others in the ensemble (Jordan Gleaves, Lucy Buchanan, Déyonté Jenkins, Jonathan Contreras, Joy Greenawalt-Lay, Micah Williams and Andrew Johnson) are quite good at making each role distinct. For instance, in addition to playing one of the decidedly disturbing witches, Keith offers us marvelous comic relief as the Porter; her bawdy explanation regarding three things drinking provokes is an hilarious gem.

Brian Russell as Duncan with Ensemble (Photo by Rick Malkin)

Among the other highly professional elements in this production are the appropriately off-kilter lighting design of the wonderful Anne Willingham, the excellent fight choreography by Wilkerson and Carrie Brewer, the throbbing sounds supplied by Evan Wilkerson, the wide array of props from Amanda Creech and the expert stage management of Daniel C. Brewer assisted by Kilby Yarbrough.

Harold Bloom, the critic/scholar who died last October after decades of analyzing and writing about Shakespeare’s work, opined that given the hold imagination has over this work, “The motto of Macbeth, both play and person, could well be: ‘And nothing is, but what is not.'” Wilkerson and his NSF colleagues have created and defined a particular world for their “Macbeth,” but their skills and commitment to the text insure this production intrigues us by never ceasing to work on our imaginations.

Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s 2020 Winter Shakespeare production of “Macbeth” continues in various Middle Tennessee locations through Feb. 21. For more information on places, times and tickets please click here.

Filed Under: Arts, Reviews, Theater

Theater Review: God Bless You, Merry Nashville Rep! ‘A Christmas Carol’ For Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

December 7, 2019 by Evans Donnell

Brian Russell as Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” (Photo by Michael Scott Evans)

Nashville Repertory Theatre’s production of Patrick Barlow’s “A Christmas Carol” adaptation is the maximum of minimalism – maximum holiday pleasure from the clear theatrical crucible of a minimalist focus. And the delight of watching five terrific actors caper through this modern version of a classic tale is no humbug.

Patrick Barlow turned Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaption of John Buchan’s novel “The 39 Steps” into a stage smash that the then-Tennessee Repertory Theatre successfully presented in 2011; now Nashville Rep brings us his take on the 1843 Charles Dickens novella that has inspired many adaptations on screen (large and small) and stage. (He’s also written a “Ben Hur” that employs three men and one woman to perform it.)

Mallory Mundy, Joy Pointe and Shawn Knight in “A Christmas Carol” (Photo by Michael Scott Evans)

Barlow’s version began its stage life with Delaware Theatre Company in 2012 and has been widely produced Off-Broadway and elsewhere since. It’s not surprising, given the broad affection for and familiarity with “A Christmas Carol” and the economy of having a handful of actors play 25 named parts (including a very special Tiny Tim); but there’s more to this adaptation than offering a holiday tradition affordably – Barlow’s writing shows a love for the tale coupled with some wry modern winks at its Victorian earnestness.

“While I’m thrilled if a smaller payroll helps you get the play on in these cash-strapped times, I would also suggest the very fact of having a minimal cast offers many exciting theatrical possibilities, not to say a chance to create real innovation and magic,” Barlow wrote to producing theaters in his introduction to the script. “As a dramatist, I am most inspired and liberated by the great periods of simplicity in theatre: the Italian Commedia, the medieval Mystery Play, ancient Greek theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, where the story, the text and the performer are central. This is why I like working with minimalist theatre – the theatre of bare necessities – and using the restraints it imposes.”

The cast of “A Christmas Carol” (Photo by Michael Scott Evans)

This production isn’t shackled by those restraints, starting with a striking Gary C. Hoff scenic design (lit with great mood-enhancing discernment by lighting designer Michael Barnett) that frames “A Christmas Carol” with a look which immediately summons the ghost of 19th Century wrought-iron creations (check out the Michael Scott Evans photos that accompany this review to take a look at his handiwork). June Kingsbury’s costume design is no less detailed, as the styles, cuts and fabrics combine to quickly take us to another place and age.

Director Beki Baker is the perfect leader of this merry band – she and the actors she directs bring out the humor (including some funny fourth-wall breaks) and humanity in the Barlow adaptation of Dickens’ evergreen tale. Two of those actors are part of the production staff as well – Shawn Knight doubles as music director while Mallory Mundy is the play’s choreographer. Their work on music and movement is as accomplished as their fine acting.

Joy Pointe as the Ghost of Christmas Past in “A Christmas Carol” (Photo by Michael Scott Evans)

Knight, Mundy, Joy Pointe and Jonah Jackson take off and don multiple characters as easily as many of us take off and don winter cardigans. After watching their performances I have several pleasant memories but I’ll share a few observations – Knight’s paternal tenderness as Scrooge’s long-suffering assistant Bob Cratchit; Mundy’s exuberance as a music hall-tinged Ghost of Christmas Present; Point’s ethereal grace and beauty as the Ghost of Christmas Past; and Jackson’s joy as Scrooge’s kind-hearted nephew Frederick. In these and so many more characters this foursome is awesome.

And what about that miserly old Ebenezer Scrooge? Ah, Brian Russell! Those who’ve watched his work on Nashville stages these past three decades know his energy and comic timing are second to none. They also know he wears the mask of tragedy as well as he wears the mask of comedy. Scrooge makes a startling emotional and psychological journey during “A Christmas Carol” and that progress is both believable and beautiful in Russell’s splendid performance.  He’s had many terrific performances over the years, including such favorites of mine as his Salieri in Blackbird Theater’s 2013 presentation of “Amadeus” and Prospero in Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s 1999 and 2010 productions of “The Tempest.” This turn as Scrooge ranks among the best of his very distinguished career.

Brian Russell as Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” (Photo by Michael Scott Evans)

Let’s raise a cup of Christmas cheer to the rest of the joyful production’s artisans – assistant director Hendrick Sheldon, artistic associate Erica Jo Lloyd, stage manager Catherine Forman, assistant stage manager Kristen Goodwin, sound designer Kaitlin Barnett, director of production Christopher L. Jones, props master Amanda Creech, scene shop foreman R. Preston Perrin, master carpenter Tucker Steinlage, costume manager Lori Gann-Smith, wardrobe supervisor Lakeland Gordon, costume technician Lauren Elisabeth Terry, run crew members Maggie Jackson and Karch Abramson, and rentals manager Emily Irene Peck. Without the spirit and strengths each bring to this endeavor the Rep’s “A Christmas Carol” would not reach the height it attains.

“A Christmas Story” had a wonderful 10-year holiday run in Johnson Theater. Perhaps “A Christmas Carol” will also become a beloved tradition for Nashville Repertory Theatre. This seasonal light deserves to shine for a long, long time.

The cast of “A Christmas Carol” (Photo by Michael Scott Evans)

Nashville Repertory Theatre’s production of Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” runs through Dec. 22 in TPAC’s Johnson Theater. Please click here for more information and to buy tickets.

Filed Under: Arts, Reviews, Theater

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