Theater

Tennessee Performing Arts Center has had many touring companies on Jackson Hall’s stage since 1980. Having attended more shows there than I can numerically recall, there have certainly been performances where a touring company’s “straight from Broadway” billing wasn’t justified in terms of the actors on that stage. This week’s sparkling visit from the “Into the Woods” revival troupe does deserve that paramount promotion, however – it is a high-quality delight from start to finish.

The 1987 Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics)/James Lapine (book) post-modern take on European fairy tales has its fun but grows, well, a little grimmer in its pursuit of the point that happy endings depend on when the story stops – and that we are all responsible for one another. It’s a good thing that “Into the Woods” doesn’t end with its first act, for the poignant emotions stirred by such Act II songs as “No More,” “No One Is Alone,” and “Children Will Listen” are truly a rewarding coda.

Two acts and a 20-minute intermission make this production a three-hour experience, but the time flies by thanks to the quality of the cast, the compassionate vision of director Lear deBessonnet (who helmed this 2022 revival for New York City Center’s “Encores!” concert series and on Broadway), the entertaining choreography of Lorin Latarro, and the onstage top-tier mix of 16 touring or local musicians conducted by music director John Bell.

If you saw this show before it closed on Broadway in January you’d have essentially seen the performers assembled for this 10-city engagement tour. And in the case of Tony Award and Olivier Award-winning actor Gavin Creel (whose tremendous talents are on full display as the Wolf and Cinderella’s Prince),  David Patrick Kelly (absolutely on-point as the Narrator and the Mysterious Man), and Kennedy Kanagawa (Milky White’s wonderfully demonstrative actor/puppeteer) you’d have seen performers who appeared in “Into the Woods” at both New York City Center and the St. James Theatre.

Real-life wife and husband Stephanie J. Block (a Tony winner for “The Cher Show“) and Sebastian Arcelus bring their personal chemistry and superb professional singing and acting talents to the roles of the Baker and his wife: “It Takes Two,” indeed. Katy Geraghty is a real hoot as Little Red Ridinghood, and her Broadway Belt is as good as her comic timing. Cole Thompson makes your heart ache as sweet, simple Jack; Aymee Garcia as Jack’s long-suffering mother pulls at those heartstrings too. And Montego Glover‘s Witch? Her acting and singing are so powerful you’ll truly believe her magic from start to finish. “Children Will Listen” and so should we all to this superlative player.

Every other member of this cast deserves praise as well. Diane Phelan’s compassionate Cinderella; Nancy Opel’s not-so-nice Stepmother; Ta’Nika Gibson and Brooke Ishibashi’s spoiled Lucinda and Florinda; Jim Stanek’s stolid Steward; the “Agony” of Jason Forbach as Rapunzel’s Prince; Alysia Velez as his towered damsel in distress Rapunzel; Felicia Curry’s tasty triple as Granny/Giant/Cinderella’s Mother; and Josh Breckenridge’s animated turns as a puppeteering flock of birds and as Cinderella’s Father.

Bountiful birch trees line David Rockwell’s enchanting set while Tyler Micoleau’s lighting ably shifts us from the lighter to darker shades of this performance. So happy with the sound designs of Scott Lehrer and Alex Neumann: making essential amplification that calls no attention to itself is a true art. Other artisans for this production – including costume designer Andrea Hood; hair, wigs, and makeup designer Cookie Jordan; and puppet designer James Ortiz – bring their plentiful talents to bear on aspects of this show that add more grace, charm and vitality to this splendid tour.

If there’s any chance you can go to this “Into the Woods” before it leaves Nashville I strongly encourage you to do so. It will be a pleasant memory for all that see it “Ever After.”

The national tour of “Into the Woods” continues in TPAC’s Andrew Jackson Hall through Sunday, May 28. For times and tickets please click here.

(All photos courtesy TPAC and the “Into the Woods” tour. Photos by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.)

“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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.”

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:

“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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.