By Alan Sherrod Two Christmas seasons working as an elf in Macy’s flagship store on New York City’s Herald Square was the inspiration for David Sedaris’ essay Santaland Diaries. Read by Sedaris on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition in…
Review: ‘Becky Shaw’ – A Tidal Pool of Shifting Relationships
By Alan Sherrod A good piece of theatre always keeps its audience guessing, a bit off balance as it were, exploring a narrative hallway of doors left there by the playwright. Becky Shaw, a 2008 comedy by Gina Gionfriddo…
Review: CBT’s ‘Alias Grace’ – A Compelling and Timely Mix of Answers and Questions
By Alan Sherrod It is a bit unfortunate that it takes TV adaptations of literary works to drive mainstream cultural recognition, but apparently that’s the world we live in. As a result, one would be hard pressed to be…
Monday Arts Miscellany – September 10
A few things to plan on this week— • The Carpetbag Theatre presents Ce Nitram Sacul at the Flying Anvil Theatre, Thursday – Saturday, September 13-15, at 7:30 PM; Sunday, September 16, at 4:00 PM Tickets and Information “…a play about…
Monday Arts Miscellany – September 3
The fall arts season has traditionally started with Labor Day, so here we are. This week, add in First Friday and you have a wide range of enlightenments and diversions. Here are a few highlights. THEATRE The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra…
Review: CBT/KSO’s ‘Candide’ – The Best of Dazzling Possibilities
By Alan Sherrod For the last year or so, productions of Leonard Bernstein’s comic operetta Candide have been popping up all over the globe, from Europe to South America, thanks in large part to the encouragement and celebration surrounding…
Monday Arts Miscellany – August 27
One can feel September sneaking furtive glances at us as August stubbornly hangs on a few more days. All will be different next week—patches of urban concrete and suburban grass, accustomed to basking in the early morning sun, may find…
Preview: Collaboration Key To CBT/KSO’s ‘Candide’
By Alan Sherrod It’s a bit ironic that Voltaire’s Candide, a novella that satirizes the 18th Century philosophy of optimism and its inevitable disillusionment, has required plenty of optimism and perseverance from those that have sought to turn it…
Review: Clarence Brown Theatre’s ‘Urinetown, the Musical’
One good rule of theatre: seize comic irony when it falls in your lap. As the audience arrived for the opening night of the Clarence Brown Theatre’s production of Urinetown, the Musical, they had to pass by the theatre’s new…
Review: CBT’s ‘The Dream of the Burning Boy’
Our perception of David West Read’s play, The Dream of the Burning Boy, in current production at Clarence Brown Theatre’s Lab Theatre, might have been quite different without the tragic mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,…