First Take Co. brought fan-favorite showtunes to Pretentious Beer Co.’s back patio on Sunday, April 21, for the 2024 season premiere of their annual summer concert series, ‘Scruffy City Sings’. This month’s theme was Music Theatre Mixer, and area musical theatre fans came out to belt out some classic tunes and celebrate all that Knoxville’s theatre scene has to offer.
Review: Clarence Brown Theatre’s ‘Kinky Boots’ – An Exhilarating Romp
As its final pick of the company’s season, the Clarence Brown Theatre opened its production of Kinky Boots on Friday evening. As it turns out, this production owes most of its genetic underpinning to that Broadway show thanks to director Rusty Mowery, a CBT alumnus and Broadway success story.
Review: The Gravity of ‘The Planets’ – Resistance is Futile
Although last evening’s Masterworks concert—Part 2 of the KSO’s Cosmos Festival— had the massive orchestral suite The Planets by Gustav Holst as its focus, there were other attractions to enchant the listener.
Confessions of a Bachophile: Chenette, Shaub, and Friends Take on J.S. Bach in Concertmaster Series
After the first half of magnificently rendered solo violin works including a movement from the Bach Violin Sonata No.3, the Baroque-inspired Ysaye Sonata No. 4, and Corelli’s variations on La Folia, Shaub was joined by colleagues from the orchestra for two Bach works: the Violin Concerto in A minor, followed by the Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C minor, BWV 1040R. The oboist was KSO Principal Claire Chenette.
Review: ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ at the Tennessee Theatre – Timely and Strong
Currently making a week-long run in Knoxville at the Tennessee Theatre, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ stars Richard Thomas as Atticus Finch in an engrossing and atmospheric production that now enjoys an inescapable timeliness and relevance.
Review: ‘Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune’ – The Audience as Voyeur
The audience became a voyeur in this superbly compelling and impressive performance of Terrence McNally’s ‘Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune.’ The two-character play was being given 5 performances in a “secret location” by Amber Collins Crane and Gregory Crane as the title couple with direction by David Ratliff.
Review: CBT’s ‘The Giver’ – Warning of a Dystopian World and a Ray of Hope
The current Clarence Brown Theatre production of ‘The Giver’ which opened last week, is a stage adaptation by Eric Coble that was commissioned and premiered by the Oregon Children’s Theatre in 2006.
Review: CBT’s ‘The Moors’ — Deliciously Dark and Atmospheric
BY ALAN SHERROD A strange, old Victorian house on the edge of the bleak, disorienting moors of Yorkshire… characters that suggest the Brontë sisters and their dissolute brother, Branwell…and, of course, the arrival of a new governess with a…
Review: Bruch’s ‘Scottish Fantasy’ Comes Alive with Stefan Jackiw and KSO – A Sensational Beethoven ‘Pastoral’
BY ALAN SHERROD Concerts have an intriguing way of taking on a life and meaning of their own. That meaning may be obvious and intentional, or personal and ineffable. That is the joy—and burden—of those that program concerts: the…
Review: Knoxville Opera’s ‘Falstaff’ – An Exhilarating Winner
BY ALAN SHERROD In his Friday evening pre-curtain remarks to the audience for Verdi’s Falstaff, Knoxville Opera General Director Jason Hardy asked for a show of hands of those seeing a KO production for the first time. Surprisingly, what…