BY HAYLEY WILSON Paranoia can feel like an infestation, a slow and subtle creeping until you’re overwhelmed by racing thoughts like scuttering insects. Director Joseph Johnson knows just what it takes to get audiences’ skin crawling with his production…
Review: TKD’s ‘Private Lives’ Airs Out the Dirty Laundry
BY HAYLEY WILSON Sometimes, old flames don’t die, but come back with a roaring and furious passion. This is the case with Noel Coward’s 1930 play Private Lives, a quick-witted and entertaining comedy of manners that gets close to…
Review: TKD’s ‘Doubt, A Parable’
BY HAYLEY WILSON In the opening monologue of John Patrick Shanley’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning Doubt, A Parable, Father Brendan Flynn (Ben Park), priest of Bronx Catholic school St. Nicholas, delivers a sermon about the feeling…
Review: TKD’s ‘A Sherlock Carol’ – A Delightful Holiday Mystery
BY HAYLEY WILSON Who would have thought that two of our most beloved franchises would work together so well? In Mark Shanahan’s 2021 A Sherlock Carol, Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuths find themselves thrust into the familiar narrative of Dickens’s…
Review: Theatre Knoxville Downtown’s ‘The Birds’ — Horror Waiting in the Wings
In the spirit of spooky season, Theatre Knoxville Downtown offers a little fright of their own with their latest production, ‘The Birds’. While those of us might be most familiar with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film, playwright Conor McPherson’s ‘The Birds’ (2009) is yet another adaptation of British author Daphne du Maurier’s popular 1952 short story of the same name.
Review: TKD’s ‘Laughter on the 23rd Floor’: A Battle of Wits
When life feels hard, comedy can be a balm to the soul and even a force for change. That’s what Neil Simon’s 1993 play, ‘Laughter on the 23rd Floor’, now in a production at Theatre Knoxville Downtown, reminds us of.
Review: ‘Harvey’ at TKD — Chasing the White Rabbit
Maybe some of you have that one friend that no one else seems to understand. No matter how many introductions you make to a variety of different people, your other friends just don’t seem to “get” this person. That’s the case with poor Elwood P. Dowd and his dear friend that no one seems to see. Director Jill Stapleton Bergeron introduces us to this unlucky friend in TKD’s production of Mary Chase’s 1953 play Harvey that keeps both actors and audiences on their toes and at their wit’s end.
Review: Theatre Roulette at TKD’s ‘Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind’
BY HAYLEY WILSON If you thought the process of memorizing lines for an entire play is a testament to the mental acuity of actors, get ready to experience the ultimate test of on-stage stamina with TKD’s production of Too…
Review: Secrets and Suspense in TKD’s ‘How A Boy Falls’
BY HAYLEY WILSON Audiences interested in a psychological thriller get their fill of on-stage suspense with Theatre Knoxville Downtown’s production of How A Boy Falls. Director Windie Wilson’s take on Steven Dietz’s 2023 play will have you sitting on…
Review: TKD’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’: A Technicolor Treat
Directed by Christina Scott Sayer, Theatre Knoxville Downtown’s production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ brings a fresh, technicolor vibrance to a stuffy, verbose parody of the many absurd hoops we jump through to avoid the pressures of social life.