We love Tommy.

Audience members love Tommy.

And then there are reviewers…

Actually, the Clarence BrownTheatre production has received some great reviews from The Knoxville News-Sentinel  and The UT Daily Beacon.  Now, Kieron Barry writing in Metropulse  joins the chorus.  He says in part:

Director Sams serves also as choreographer, and it is here that her gifts truly come alive, with ensemble dancing that is high-spirited and rugged yet wholly disciplined. The most outstanding moments are those using wires, and Jonathan Visser’s Tommy is given almost carte blanche with these. His early flight to the roof by hanging onto a small balloon is but a prelude to the balletic, hypnotic extravagances of the second act.

Visser once again proves himself an actor worth watching. He happens to have a strong resemblance to Conan O’Brien, and indeed shares a manic, twitchy alertness with the comedian, which he uses here to his advantage, most especially in the climax to Act One, when, pinball-bound at last, he jerks and tremors in endless tactile frisson.

It is “Pinball Wizard,” of course, that is the high point of Tommy, and the pedalled crescendo in the build-up to this song is as unbearably exciting as anything by Rossini. The music reaches its apotheosis when the most famous phrase in the show is sung with unbelievable intensity by the leering, mohawked Quinn Q. Cason. Here he is given just a few syllables, but the effect is mesmerizing.

For all its minor flaws, the show is a glorious, messy, lovable production that is so strongly felt and urgently delivered that it’s difficult not to be won over by the sheer passion of the artists and the grandiosity of its vision. It’s the first show I’ve seen in the Clarence Brown that makes the space seem too small.

The Who’s Tommy  runs through May 3.  Tickets are still available for most performances — call the Clarence Brown Theatre Box Office at (865) 974-5161 or online at http://www.clarencebrowntheatre.com/.

More great reviews keep coming in for the Clarence Brown Theatre’s production of The Who’s Tommy.  Monday’s UT Daily Beacon  features a review by Ben Whiteside, “Play uses spectacle to captivate“:

The Clarence Brown Theatre is ending the 2008-2009 season with a bang with its stage production of The Who’s 1969 magnum opus “Tommy.”

The Grammy Hall of Fame-inducted rock opera tells the story of the blind, deaf and dumb Tommy Walker, his troubled childhood, and his pinball- and miracle cure-aided ascent to greatness. This production provides some spectacular eye candy, fantastic and faithful renditions of The Who’s original music, and plenty of reasons to yell and cheer.

“Tommy,” one of the four “Main Stage Productions” of the season (five smaller productions took place in the adjacent Carousel or Lab Theatres), is truly a spare-no-expense outing for the Clarence Brown Theatre. With a total of no fewer than 32 cast members, a full rock band, elaborate set design (including an on-stage video camera and several projectors and screens used in conjunction to fantastic effect) and several instances of high-flying wired suspension in addition to many other exciting extravagances, “Tommy” will certainly not disappoint fans of spectacle.

…

“Tommy” is unquestionably the most technically impressive, fun and exciting production of the Clarence Brown Theatre’s ’08-’09 season. It is epic in scope and has great music and plenty of fantastic visuals to keep you engaged. If you haven’t gotten the chance to see any of the productions in this nearly impeccable season, please do yourself a favor and check this one out. Bring your friends, family, co-workers, significant other(s) — whatever, just get there. You won’t be disappointed.

We’re still going through our show photos, but we’ll include another one here to whet your interest:

The Clarence Brown Theatre’s production of The Who’s Tommy  is receiving thunderous applause and glowing reviews.

Here’s a sample from Harold Duckett in the Knoxville News-Sentinel:

“The Who’s ‘Tommy’” is banging the rafters and literally rising up into them at the Clarence Brown Theatre through May 3. It opened Friday.

Pete Townshend’s song cycle about the traumatization and ultimate redemption of Tommy, after a decade of being deaf, mute and blind, hits every lick under Casey Sams’ direction and in Christopher Pickart’s inventively industrial set.

Tickets are still available for most performances — Call The Clarence Brown Theatre Box Office at 974-5161 or order online!

These economic times are challenging for all — and the arts are not exempt.

HOWEVER, it should be noted that the Clarence Brown Theatre’s current production of Copenhagen has achieved its single ticket goal!

To see why, take a look at another review of this production (running through this Saturday April 11th - hurry!).  This one’s from the Daniel Sierra in Tennessee Journalist:

The simple set and passionate performances in the Clarence Brown Theatre’s production of Copenhagen leave a powerful impact on its viewers.

With Copenhagen, director Kate Buckley took Frayn’s scrambled play and gave it life and emotion.  While the overarching theme of uncertainty was still present, the acting made us care about the characters and become embedded in their dilemma.  

The Clarence Brown Theatre’s production of Copenhagen (continuing in the Carousel Theatre through April 11) is receiving some interesting reviews.

The Knoxville News-Sentinel’s Harold Duckett explores the implications the playwright and our artists lay out:

Appropriately performed at Ula Love Doughty Carousel Theatre on a set that could be a model of an atom, with its blue nucleus center and electron pathways encircling it, “Copenhagen” is part history lesson, part physics lecture, part psychological analysis of what motivates great minds who alternately admire and trash talk each other’s achievements.

It is also a peek into the love-hate dichotomy often built into mentor-student relationships.

Had Heisenberg, calculatingly well played by David Brian Alley, come to Copenhagen to secretly tell Bohr, superbly played by Dan Kremer, that the Nazis were working on making an atomic bomb, or to clandestinely find out if the Allies were? Or had he returned to an intellectual nest to find emotional comfort in an increasingly cutthroat, politically charged environment?

Ben Whiteside, writing in the UT Daily Beacon, puts his own spin on the play:

“Copenhagen” isn’t nearly as concerned with history as much as theory, with friendship as much as the dynamics of a relationship, or with knowledge as much as the unknowable. Indeed, and even despite Heisenberg and Bohr’s near-incessant explanations of mind-numbing science, Frayn wrote a play largely about the immaterial.

In other words, while the two physicists might have labored to explain why and how the body replaces nearly all its cells every seven years, Frayn would be far more concerned with the repercussions such a process had on personal identity and other things non-physical.

That said, don’t go see “Copenhagen” if you’re looking for a white-knuckle tale of wartime intrigue. This a story with a total of three characters (all of whom are dead before the play begins), little conflict in the traditional sense, one set, no scene changes, and mile-a-minute dialogue that flows uninterrupted for well over two hours. It might sound intimidating, but “Copenhagen” is actually one of the more involving-and rewarding-plays in the Clarence Brown Theatre’s 2008-2009 season.  

For tickets, call the Clarence Brown Theatre Box Office at (865) 974-5161 or buy online at http://www.clarencebrowntheatre.com.

There are also photos available online at http://www.flickr.com/photos/29485770@N07/sets/72157616153552898/show/.

In the words of the Bard, “It’s a danged good show!”

OK, William Shakespeare never said that.  But he might have put those sentiments into Iambic Pentameter after seeing the Clarence Brown Theatre production of Love’s Labour’s Lost in the Carousel Theatre.

As Willie couldn’t be with us, take a look at what the News-Sentinel’s Harold Duckett had to say about the play:

In set designer Jack Magaw’s magnificently minimal theater-in-the-round presentation that gives Sheakspeare’s river of words an iridescent glow, director John Sipes’ vision of transplanting Love’s Labors’ whimsical kingdom of Navarre to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920s is successful beyond measure.

It goes on…

If all this is beginning to sound like an overload, it’s merely a Cliffs Notes version of the saturation experience that Clarence Brown Theatre artistic director Calvin Maclean has put together as the perfect antidote for these bleak economic times, at least for a couple of hours.

Read the entire review.

Oh, and you can take a look at Roger’s show photos on flickr.

Love’s Labour’s Lost runs through Sunday, March 15.  Tickets are available through the Clarence Brown Theatre Box Office (865-974-5161) or online.  You can even print your own tickets at home!

The Clarence Brown Theatre’s production of Pierre Marivaux’s The Triumph of Love is in full swing, and those who have seen it seem to be enjoying it.

This romantic comedy/French farce closes the day after Valentine’s Day. 

Here’s the official CBT Press Release.

Here’s a link to the review in the UT Daily Beacon.

And here’s a link to the review in the Metropulse.

(The Knoxville News-Sentinel has given up trying to be a grown-up newspaper, so it doesn’t review all our plays anymore.)

Finally, here’s a link to buy tickets online!

Ain’t Misbehavin’ is in the final week of its run at the Clarence Brown Theatre.

Audience reaction as been great, but there are still a few seats available for the remaining performances.

Here’s what media reviewers have had to say about the production:

Ben Whiteside in the UT Daily Beacon says that “those who appreciate simple, well-crafted songs about love, dancing, self-expression and, yes, sex, or those who have any sort of interest in musical theater, would enjoy Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

Now if the audience equates “simple, well-crafted songs” with “snooze-o-rama” then they will be surprised, as Waller’s ability and courage to take songs to interesting, humorous and flat-out unexpected places is one of his most endearing qualities. Take “The Viper’s Drag,” for instance — a smolderingly sleazy song that exudes sexuality a la Catherine Zeta-Jones’ steamy Chicago number “All That Jazz” — sung by a man? About smoking the reefer? Really?

He concludes that

“Ain’t Misbehavin’” is a great way to start the new Clarence Brown season, and if the audience is not tapping their feet along with pianist Charles Creath during the show (he never stops), they will definitely be tapping all the way home.

 The Metropulse review by Kieron Barry appeared in mid-run (their Thursday publication date doesn’t help us much — but at least mid-run is an improvement over the couple-of-days-before-closing date that we used to see in the past.)  Mr. Barry has a few nice things to say about the performances, but uses his space to complain that the Clarence Brown Theatre shouldn’t be producing musical revues at all:

Such trompe l’oeils aside, Ain’t Misbehavin’ remains the wrong show in the wrong venue. The Department of Theatre could have triumphed by putting it on mike-free in a studio-space, or as a cabaret event. As it stands, the show is certainly not without its charms, and all in all it’s about as much fun as an inevitable disappointment can be. Entertaining always, and spectacular often. But drama it ain’t.

One reader’s comments totally skewers Mr. Barry’s thesis, so please read those.  I’ll just note that Mr. Barry fashions himself a playwright, and it’s perfectly understandable for a playwright to want to see plays, not revues, performed in theatres — it would seem to improve his shot at getting performed.  But I wouldn’t hold my breath…

As the area’s most read publication, the Knoxville News-Sentinel normally sends a staffer on Opening Night to review CBT performances, although lately, their Doug Mason has been showing up for Preview or other days.  For whatever reason, Mr. Mason didn’t show up until a week after Opening for this show, so his readers were kept waiting.  But as he acknowledged in his review, “seems folks found their way to the theater without my help.”

Late or not, he liked the show:

There was a crowd. They were pleased.

As was I, the late theater critic who enjoyed just sitting back in his seat for two-plus hours, tapping his feet and bobbin’ his head, as close to the rhythm of the music as he was able, and not thinking about much else.

I’m glad he enjoyed it.

Trouble is, time’s running out for this fun show.  Contrary to rumors, the performance run of Ain’t Misbehavin’ is not being extended — it ends Sunday, September 21st — so don’t waste any time — see it evenings on Wednesday the 17th, Thursday the 18th, Friday the 19th, and Sunday the 21st (we take Saturday off for football!), and a matinee on Sunday the 21st.  Call the Box Office at 974-5161 or buy online at www.clarencebrowntheatre.com.