From its initial workshops to off-Broadway shows, then from Washington, D.C.,’s Arena Stage through a Broadway run of almost two years, Next to Normal has challenged performers and audiences alike with its daringly told story about a suburban family and the many emotional minefields they must navigate, including bipolar disorder, suicide, drugs, grief and even psychiatric ethics. It’s billed as a rock musical — with book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey and music by Tom Kitt — and guitars and percussion often drive the songs, though the pulse of its modern urgency is conveyed equally via dramatic piano and plaintive strings.

With its unconventional approach to the integration of lyrics and dialogue, Next to Normal is clearly stamped as a contemporary piece of the post-Rent era, and it’s been recognized as something special via the Outer Critics’ Circle Award for Outstanding Score, its Drama Desk Award nominations, its three 2009 Tony Awards, and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama — only the eighth musical in history so honored. Boiler Room Theatre mounts the Middle Tennessee premiere with a cast of six headed up by Mike Baum, Ben Van Diepen and Megan Murphy Chambers, who takes on maybe the most demanding musical role of her considerable Nashville career as the manic wife and mother Diana.

Little Shop of Horrors is currently playing at TPAC, and lest anyone enter Johnson Theater doubting that creepiness awaits, Tennessee Repertory Theatre has shrewdly selected delightfully ominous pre-show and intermission music, featuring excerpts from the score of Disney's Fantasia (Dukas, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky), not to mention Bernard Herrmann's tension-packed strings from Psycho.

The Rep's production of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's opus is very successful on many levels, even if it bends slightly under the weight of its cheesy source material. More interesting to consider is the distinction between the stage version and the popular $25 million Frank Oz movie from 1986 — in which the musical's ending was changed because test audiences supposedly couldn't accept the fate of the principals.

Thankfully, theatergoers are made of tougher stuff, and the Rep's take pulls no punches, with director René Copeland assembling a talented ensemble and eliciting top-flight performances from stars Patrick Waller and Martha Wilkinson.

Wilkinson once again proves her versatility — you could even argue she's the only actress within a hundred miles who could rightfully achieve the spirit of Ellen Greene's stage and screen portrayal as the lovable dumb blonde, Audrey. Wilkinson is paying some homage perhaps, but her reading is fresh, and her singing, especially in the mini-epic "Somewhere That's Green," is full-throated, expressive and exceptionally moving.

Waller is her equal in his turn as Seymour, the flower-shop nerd who desires a better life and tries to attain it by nurturing a man-eating plant — which brings him fame but also tragedy. Waller's vocals are strong throughout, but he's particularly sharp in his solo interlude during the stirring full-cast scene-setter "Skid Row (Downtown)," another song with epic '60s-style pop aspirations. (If you didn't know differently, you might think Phil Spector wrote it.)

Read the whole review here.

Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black is a pretty hot commodity these days, with major credits for both TV and film projects, including the Academy Award-winning Milk (2008) and also J. Edgar (2011). Black is also an LGBT rights activist, and last year he authored the play 8, drawing upon original court transcripts, media reports and interviews to portray events and testimony in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial, which led to the overturn of California’s Proposition 8.

After the play’s debut at New York City’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre on Sept. 19, it was later broadcast from a West Coast venue to a worldwide audience via YouTube on March 3. Since then, the American Foundation for Equal Rights and Broadway Impact — a nonprofit organization of theater artists in support of marriage equality — released rights free of charge to community and university theaters nationwide for one-night-only readings.

Now Nashville’s version happens under the Rhubarb Theater banner, with a deluge of support from the local arts community. Robyn Berg directs, and the cast of 22 includes a wide selection of Music City stage folk, including Christopher Mohnani, Jim Al-Shamma, Nettie Kraft, Anthony Just, Wesley Paine, Ryan Williams, Chris Bosen, Lisa Marie Wright and others. A talk-back follows the hourlong presentation, and that should prove interesting, since this case may wind up before the Supreme Court. All proceeds go to AFER.

Unless you were recently thawed from an Ice Age glacier and are still marveling at those iron birds passing overhead, this show is about as self-explanatory as entertainment gets. (Requests for "Satisfaction" will be met with severe retribution.) Wednesday's bonus offerings include the pre-show "Arts Appetizer" providing a sneak peek behind the scenes at 6 p.m., while the post-show "TalkBack Thursday" the next night pulls back the curtain even more. You can find more info on both events here.

Click here for ticket information.

The rest of the schedule is devoted to big-ticket musical fare such as My Fair Lady, Big River and Smokey Joe's Cafe, with a production of A Christmas Carol timed to coincide with Franklin's lavish Main Street Christmas festivities. For now, though, the troupe is readying its production of The Sound of Music for a May 31 opening.

Also, congrats to the artist who found a way to incorporate images representing each play into one clever poster design. Press release after the jump.

John Steinbeck’s 1937 novel about Depression-era California farm workers evokes a moving and richly interesting period in American history. It’s found success as a stage version as well — in particular through its central story of friendship, which is played out with equal measure of pathos and poignance. It’s hard to recall a Nashville production of the play in the recent era, so Boiler Room Theatre’s new mounting should be of ready interest.

Actor Travis Brazil, recently of BRT’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire and also Blackbird Theater’s Pacific Overtures, sits in the director’s chair for this one, and Ross Bolen and John Mauldin — both newcomers to BRT — are George and Lennie. The remainder of Brazil’s cast features familiar and talented folk, including Phil Brady, Dan McGeachy, Corey Caldwell, Zack McCann, Erica Lee Haines, Joel Diggs, Dan Zeigler and Bryce Conner.

In recent months, the Encore channels have been showing Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, a feature-length documentary about the most polarizing figure in comedy ever. Love or hate Le Jer — and you'll find us carrying banners in the "love" parade — the doc makes a solid case for Lewis as a technical innovator, a restless talent, and a savvy and exacting director. One of the doc's closing notes is that Lewis is putting the finishing touches on a Broadway-bound stage musical of his best-known vehicle, 1963's The Nutty Professor.

Now comes word, as of last night's gala TPAC season preview, that The Nutty Professor 3.0 will make its world premiere with a run at TPAC's Polk Theatre July 24-Aug. 19. It arrives with an impressive pedigree: music by Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line), book and lyrics by Rupert Holmes (The Mystery of Edwin Drood and, yes, "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)"), and most promising of all, direction by Lewis himself.

Actor and singer Michael Andrew, a familiar face from Lewis' Labor Day telethons of recent years, will handle the dual role of nebbishy Prof. Julius Kelp and his sleazeball alter ego Buddy Love. The production also plans to hold local auditions for both major and ensemble roles. It's been some time since Nashville hosted one of these blockbuster-in-training trial runs (remember the Johnny Mercer revue Dream with Lesley Ann Warren?), where audiences can watch the play change and develop in public. As the clip above shows, Lewis has had The Nutty Professor in the works for years, with Andrew in mind.

Single tickets go on sale April 27, though subscribers to the 2012-13 season can purchase tickets now by clicking here or calling (615) 782-6560. They could be the theatrical equivalent of a blue-chip stock. Below, the full press release from TPAC.

For breadth of musical theater, try topping a show-tune continuum that extends from Cole Porter and irving Berlin through Elton John to Billie Joe Armstrong. That's what TPAC unveiled last night at the gala preview for its 2012-13 HCA/TriStar Broadway Series, which opens Oct. 23-28 with the lauded current Broadway revival of Porter's Anything Goes.

Anything Goes makes an especially noteworthy launch for the season. A featured player will be Stephanie Rothenberg, a former Nashvillian with lots of local theater and recording credits. Currently, she's playing the female lead opposite Nick Jonas and Beau Bridges in the highly touted Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Reworked cinematic properties dominate the lineup, which includes Irving Berlin's White Christmas (Nov. 13-18); Flashdance (March 19-24, 2013); and perhaps the most promising of the bunch, the Tony-winning Catch Me if You Can (Jan. 22-27, 2013), adapted from the Steven Spielberg true-life con-man saga by the high-powered team of librettist Terrence McNally, composer Marc Shaiman and lyricist Scott Wittman.

The blockbuster The Lion King concludes the season with what is likely another instant sellout run May 7-June 4, 2013. But the surprise among the bunch may be the acrobatic extravaganza Traces, which made Time magazine's Top 10 list last year for live theater: a white-knuckled display of leaps, dives and dizzying feats conceived by the Montreal troupe Les 7 Doigts de la Main. We're also happy to see the stage version of Green Day's American Idiot (March 5-7, 2013) as a special attraction, along with the head-banging musical Rock of Ages (April 19-20, 2013), whose film version is en route to theaters.

Information on season tickets (starting at $100 for a six-play package) follows in the TPAC release below.

Middle Tennessee has had some serious mountings of this groundbreaking documentary-style play based on the story of Matthew Shepard. Originally developed by Moises Kaufman’s Tectonic Theatre Project, The Laramie Project profiles Shepard, a young gay man who was beaten to death in Wyoming in 1998, a shocking event that awakened the nation to the reality of hate crimes.

Given this work’s subject matter and potentially complex staging, it’s of special note when adolescents — in this case, University School of Nashville’s Student Theatre Guild — take on the challenge. USN theater faculty member Catherine Coke says Guild members expressed an interest in producing The Laramie Project in light of pertinent events in Tennessee, including the recent suicides of young gay people and anti-gay legislation issues. Senior Hannah Baker directs, and her precocious cast includes Jackie Carter, Preston Crowder, Sam Douglas, Abby Horrell, Christy Slobogin, David Zeitlin, Adam Hudnut-Beumler, Dylan Pitt, Margaret Rose, Cyrus Shick, Sammie Chomsky, Tess Deegan, Jack Rayson, Izzy Creavin and Aidan Watt.