ArtsCriticATL.com

There will be no snoozing in the mezzanine during “Spring Awakening,” the electrifying youthapalooza musical that’s taking over Atlanta’s Fox Theatre through Sunday, March 14. Some folks may choose to slip out quietly midway, as a few did on opening night, deciding this is not the Rodgers and Hammerstein they signed up for.

But dozing is not an option. After first taking Off-Broadway then Broadway by storm in 2006, winning eight Tony Awards and everything else they hand out, “Spring Awakening” has finally made it to Atlanta. It’s not for everyone — rock musicals with onstage sex…

Georgia Shakespeare’s 25th season will begin with a world premiere: “Prophets,” a multimedia work by longtime company member Brad Sherrill, which delves into the Old Testament texts of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

From March 24 through 28, Sherrill will perform “Prophets” in repertory with his first one-man Bible-based show, “The Gospel of John,”  which he has performed more than 500 times since 2001 at churches and theaters, from off-Broadway’s Lamb’s Theatre to Westminster Cathedral. 

I am sorry to say that I have…

After a bit of a financial dry spell, Georgia Shakespeare’s Shake at the Lake is coming back to Atlanta’s Piedmont Park in May.

On the verge of opening its 25th season, the theater announced Wednesday that Bank of America has come through as sponsor of the evocative, al fresco happening. (After running for four years, the 2009 event was canceled because the theater couldn’t afford it.)

The Alliance Theatre has announced its 2010-11 season, and it’s a pretty spectacular lineup. Beginning with the world premiere of “Bring It On: The Musical,” based on the film about extreme cheerleader competitions, the list includes five premieres (including a new play by Atlanta’s Pearl Cleage, top photo) and Tracy Letts’ big, juicy, Pulitzer Prize-winning family potboiler, “August: Osage County.”

Though it had been rumored that the Stephen King-John Mellencamp musical “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County,” announced for the 2008-09 season but later scratched, was back in the mix, it apparently didn’t make the list.

The mystery surrounding…

Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” has been presented, and perceived, as an exercise in folksy nostalgia, a comfortably configured time machine back to a simpler era when genial doctors made house calls, milkmen delivered freshly sweating glass bottles to the back stoop and nobody locked their doors at night. If you want to absorb it at that level, fine, although that could lead to the very complacency that Wilder is warning us against in the end.

Certainly Kenny Leon isn’t into it for the pull of the past. His new version of “Our Town” at True Colors Theatre

What hath Mel wrought? When Mel Brooks remade his movie “The Producers” into a mega-musical in 2001, he won an armload of Tonys and made more money than God’s hedge fund manager. He also jump-started the unstoppable trend of churning out musical theater based on movies, which has led to the good (“Spamalot”) and the not-so (“The Wedding Singer”).

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Producers, the real ones, love these shows because the audience already knows and presumably loves the basic franchise. But beware the…