Kieron Barry

The partnership of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken may perhaps be best remembered for almost single-handedly rescuing the Disney brand from its seemingly-terminal 1980s slump, but arguably the two never produced anything more charming or complete than their collaboration on ...

As Blanche descends into frailty and fantasy, the demands of the part escalate, and the final act is a responsibility harrowing enough to make even an exceptionally strong actor uneasy. Director Calvin MacLean’s wonderful production is lucky indeed to boast ...

Like all vital arts organizations, the Clarence Brown Theatre is, in equal parts, exhilarating and infuriating. This is as it should be; if a theater is to take risks then by definition it must occasionally misjudge, offend, and even fail, ...

I recall attending a play years ago when, just as the performance was about to start, the theater manager stormed in and accused a few innocent audience members of not having paid for their tickets. He may as well have ...

A bad night at the cinema is 10 times better than a bad night at the theater, but a great night at the theater is 10 times better than a great night at the cinema. Why? Theater is risky. At ...

Director David Kennedy’s straightforward, plush realization of Marivaux’s The Triumph of Love is a commendable production, easier to admire than enjoy but offering nevertheless a worthwhile opportunity to see a significant play.

Clint Eastwood may be 78, but he proves in Gran Torino that he can still spit, swear, and shoot better than most. He’s soundly vanquished John McCain, and now only Robert Mugabe remains as a challenger to the title of ...

The discovery of sex, like the discovery of one’s religious faith, initially promises a life of joyful communion. Instead, both generally bequeath journeys of unbearable loneliness. Making a mournful plunge for the heart of these twin, paradoxical transcendences is Doubt, ...

From Danny Boyle, one of the liveliest and most worthwhile directors of recent years, comes this modern-day Balzac-ian rags-to-riches tale, a bright and shiny thing of almost no value whatsoever. In Slumdog Millionaire the slums of Paris are now the ...

I often fantasize about a Knoxville in which theater and football have switched places. Leading up to game days we would see Phillip Fulmer—or whoever the head coach will be—frantically pleading with small businesses for a few dollars in sponsorship, ...

Critic Kieron Barry takes a look at some of the 2008 Secret City Film Festival’s notable short films.

The Clarence Brown Theatre opens its new season with an odd choice, Ain’t Misbehavin’: The Fats Waller Musical Show. The final word in the subtitle was presumably inserted by the lawyers, since while the production is certainly a show—and unquestionably ...

Take a recording of Fozzy Bear catching a paw in the blades of a lawn mower, play it at half-speed, and voila!; you have Phil Bozeman, voice of Whitechapel.

Shakespeare on the Square dares to bring the Bard’s English into the humid arena of Market Square. Stratford-upon-Avon’s own Kieron Barry is there to catch all the action.

It’s 7 p.m. at the Bijou Theatre when the doors are flung open by a brace of lissome volunteers, and the avalanche of filmmakers, film-lovers, and the merely film-curious that will form tonight’s audience tumbles into the lobby. Such hubbub ...

I can’t have been the only person to double-take at the name of Randy Couture on the cast list for Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Mamet’s new film. Yes; sure enough it’s that Randy Couture, five-time winner of the Ultimate Fighting ...

I have a recurring fear when at the cinema. On screen, the hero gives his “hoo-hah” turnaround speech in Act Three and the assembled athletes, factory workers, or grateful villagers that have thronged about him break into a riot of ...

Theater: After seeing Philip Seymour Hoffmann’s stunning off-Broadway production of The Little Flower of East Orange last week, I thought it a safe bet I wouldn’t emerge so exhilarated from a theater for some time. But in Guys & Dolls, ...

Lynne Nottage’s Intimate Apparel is set in the America of the early 1900s, a world in which if you can’t be male you’d better be white, and if you can’t be white you’d better be attractive. Probing this obnoxious pecking ...

Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 play The Sunset Limited is the last major outing for the Actors Co-Op at the Black Box Theatre in Bearden before the company becomes semi-itinerant, and the show is a fairly noble swansong to what will be ...

The Clarence Brown Theatre is the most sturdy of cultural lifelines thrown to us poor wretches clinging to the artistic driftwood of East Tennessee. Simply by existing it compensates for the aesthetic death of a thousand cuts that is a ...