Evans Donnell is the chief theater, film and opera critic. He wrote reviews and features about theater, opera and classical music for The Tennessean from 2002 to 2011. He was the theater, film and opera critic for ArtNowNashville.com from 2011 to 2012. Donnell has also contributed to The Sondheim Review, Back Stage and several other publications since beginning his professional journalism career in 1985. He was selected as a fellow for the 2004 National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and for National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) arts journalism institutes for theater and musical theater at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in 2006 and classical music and opera at the Columbia University School of Journalism in 2009. He has also been an actor (member of Actors Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA), founding and running AthensSouth Theatre from 1997 to 2001 and appearing in Milos Forman's "The People vs Larry Flynt" among other credits. Donnell is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association (www.americantheatrecritics.org).
FRANKLIN, Tenn. – Nearly all of Studio Tenn’s My Fair Lady is wonderful (or “loverly” in the show’s lingo). But I have strong negative thoughts and feelings about the way the terrific troupe ends the final scene of this great Golden Age musical. The Alan Jay Lerner – Frederick Loewe adaptation that used George Bernard Shaw’s [...]
Like many whose introduction to William Shakespeare has come through the dry instruction of an English class James Shapiro was no fan of the Bard while growing up. “I was turned off by it in junior high and high school and I never took a college course on Shakespeare so I came to it late [...]
Watching a musical at Street Theatre Company is typically a pleasurable experience. Watching their production of Spring Awakening, one of the best musicals in recent years, is sheer ecstasy. Director Martha Wilkinson, Musical Director Rollie Mains, Choreographer Holly Shepherd and the performing artists presenting their version of the 2006 winner of eight Tony Awards have [...]
Lieutenant Herschel Doyle Ponder was unquestionably one of the millions of American heroes who fought so bravely and selflessly in World War II. He was awarded the Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with Clusters for his service as a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bomber pilot in the US Army Air Forces (aka Army Air [...]
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The 2013 Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville ended a month ago, but its impact will be felt at other festivals and theaters long after living moments there are just memories. Of course, that opinion is a fairly safe one since the springtime theatrical conclave near the [...]
This review is skeletal at best, but with good reason: It’s been three weeks since I viewed the cinematic kaleidoscope created by Shane Carruth called Upstream Color and I still can’t tell you what it’s about in any linear sense. That’s exactly why I enjoyed it, though. Carruth’s new feature is his second; Primer (2004) was [...]
The folks at Tennessee Repertory Theatre make their shows look so good. I’ve often written about the vets on the front line like Producing Artistic Director René Copeland that make that happen. Sunday and Monday, though, it’s about some of the folks you don’t get to see at TPAC as you sit there marveling at the [...]
Mud is a coming-of-age story that’s also a love letter to American literature and classic American movies. For writer-director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter) it began with a simple idea that gestated for years in his creative imagination. “It’s a pretty dense story and I think a part of that is the fact that I’ve carried [...]
The Nashville Film Festival (NaFF) that wrapped Thursday at Regal Green Hills Stadium 16 broke records and charted new territory, according to its organizers. The festival presented by Nissan closed its 44th consecutive year with a 5.7% increase in attendance and a total of 27,813 attendees, which was music to the ears and eyes of Artistic [...]
Like several of my colleagues I got into journalism because John Seigenthaler was my hero from the first time I heard him speak about his profession. Around the same time this amazing, encouraging and remarkable man was getting me to imagine what “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” (to borrow loosely from Finley Peter Dunne) [...]
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My Fair Lady Trailer presented by Studio Tenn
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