Theatre Knoxville Downtown Goes Off the Wall With Del Shores’ 'Sordid Lives'
Sordid Lives is one extraordinarily wacky play. If you were to draw lines between Tennessee Williams and John Waters, Eudora Welty and Benny Hill, Carson McCullers and the Monkees’ TV show, they might...
View ArticleSomewhere Between Hip-Hop and Ballet, Companhia Urbana de Dança Offers a Rare...
The multicultural Brazilian troupe is made up of young dancers from the slums of Rio de Janeiro, under the direction of a classically trained ballet choreographer named Sonia Destri Lie. It’s not...
View ArticleCBT and Carol Mayo Jenkins take 'The Trip to Bountiful'
Horton Foote’s play seems to be creeping toward the status of American myth. It’s surprising that Clarence Brown Theatre has never taken it on before, but they’re doing it exactly as they should, with...
View ArticleReconstruction: Clarence Brown Unleashes 'The Whipping Man'
The least expected aspect of The Whipping Man, a searing drama about slavery, war, poverty, racism, torture, gangrene, and unanesthetized amputation is that it’s frequently hilarious. For a one-set,...
View ArticleCircle Modern Dance's Annual Holiday Showcase Leans Toward the Unforgettable
Circle Modern Dance rarely needs publicity for its annual Modern Dance Primitive Light show. Most Decembers, they pack the Laurel Theater for the multiple evenings of Knoxville’s most-anticipated...
View ArticleFlying Anvil's 'Venus in Fur' Adds to an Already Thriving Theater Scene
Sunday afternoons on Gay Street aren’t what they used to be.
View ArticleNoises Off, Fore and Aft: Clarence Brown Theatre Presents Classic Modern...
Anyone who’s been in a play knows that there are always two simultaneous dramas: the one presented to the audience, and the often more desperate one backstage.
View ArticleClarence Brown Theatre Produces High-Speed Farce With Tom Stoppard’s 'On the...
Tom Stoppard's On the Razzle is a classic mistaken-identity, disapproving-parent, jealous-pursuit romp turned up a few notches. It’s like a long Marx Brothers routine, with about a dozen Marx Brothers,...
View ArticleDowntown’s Satirical Revue "Forbidden Knoxville" Tries Out a Fresh Venue
“You’re so odd but we love you still,” goes a refrain in the opening number of Flying Anvil’s new musical production. The endearment is directed, of course, at the city of Knoxville, and expresses our...
View ArticleWe Finally Get To See the Long-Rumored Knoxville Play 'Five Women Wearing the...
Five Women Wearing the Same Dress was first mentioned in these pages back in the ’90s. Back then, we’d heard rumors of a wacky off-Broadway comedy that happened to be set in Knoxville. We never made...
View ArticleClarence Brown Theater Takes on Rothko in 'Red'
The drama plays out as a very animated dialogue between the late-middle-aged Rothko, at the peak of his ca. 1960 vogue, and a (fictional) young assistant named Ken. The main context is Rothko’s famous...
View ArticleClarence Brown Theatre and KSO Collaborate On a Brilliant Production of...
Perhaps like no other recent work for the musical stage, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is so eminently adaptable and bendable as theater that it practically cries...
View Article'Red Scare on Sunset': Theater Knoxville Downtown Takes on the Pinkos
The play twists some assumptions about that paranoid era. This play is unlikely to appeal to the Tea Party, but, as it turns out, some of Pilford’s paranoia is justified. In this tale, Communists do...
View ArticleClarence Brown Produces an Energetic 'Kiss Me, Kate'
It’s almost silly to review these things. If you like musicals, you’ll like Clarence Brown Theatre’s production of Kiss Me, Kate. You won’t lose money betting they get a standing ovation every night....
View ArticleCBT's 'Dead Man's Cell Phone' Raises Questions About Our Modern Obsession
Here’s your dilemma: You’re in a cafe with a lone stranger whose incessantly ringing cellphone is bugging you. He’s the most annoying jerk in the world until you walk over to give him a piece of your...
View ArticleThis Is So Surreal: Tennessee Stage Co. Premieres 'The Good Son'
Craig Smith's debut is an interesting and unpredictable thriller, often darkly funny, with moments of physical violence and with a few shocks along the way that elicited gasps from the audience.
View ArticleCBT Saves Folk Musical 'Black Pearl Sings!' From Sanctimony
Directed by Kate Buckley, Black Pearl Sings! turns out to be better than you expect it to be. The premise—a naïve white folklorist interviewing a black convict for the “authentic” songs she knows—seems...
View ArticleClarence Brown Theatre's 'Fuddy Meers': A Minor Riot of Absurdist Modern Comedy
Fuddy Meers is a comedy about cognitive dysfunction, but don’t go with a grim sense of duty and a checkbook. It is not an appeal for greater awareness for dementia or posttraumatic stress disorder,...
View ArticleTheatre Knoxville Uncovers Existential Absurdity in Tom Stoppard's 'Heroes'
Heroes isn’t as bleak or, probably, as provocative as Beckett, but like that crypto-existentialist’s work, occasionally breaks through the mundane reality of mere sadness to absurdity, which can make...
View ArticleCBT Takes on Award-Winning Musical 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee'
This is a modern-style Broadway musical, not much like Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, maybe, but not so different from, say, Rent.
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