Alan Portner - Page 3

Alan Portner

Al Portner is regional editor for Broadway World – Kansas City.  He is a retired career journalist and media executive who has written for publication over more than 40 years. Portner has published daily newspapers in venues as far east as Washington DC, as far west as Honolulu HI.




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First Show:

The first musical I saw on Broadway was 1776 with the original cast.

Favorite Show:

My favorite show current recent show is Phantom Of The Opera

Favorite Stories:

  • BWW Review: AN EVENING WITH SIERRA BOGGESS at Musical Theater Heritage - Because of the presence of Ms. Boggess' parents in a small space environment, I felt like the veil dropped and we saw a glimpse of who this excellent performer really is as a person. I was able to feel the relationship of this family in relation to my own children.
  • BWW Review: BETWEEN THE LINES at Kansas City Repertory Theatre - BETWEEN THE LINES was a Pre-Broadway tryout production performed in front of the Broadway creative team. The show has yet to open in New York, but it remains clever and engaging. It also generated Broadway World reads at a rate four or five times what would normally be expected in a market of about two million.
  • The Last Romance at New Theatre Restaurant - THE LAST ROMANCE marked the final teaming of Charley Robinson and Michael Learned. Both were charming in a super venue.
  • Review: HADESTOWN at Kansas City Music Hall - The touring company of HADESTOWN featured a complex and thoughtful exploration of an ancient myth transported into another, but indefinite point in time. It was early in the run and a super cast was still extremely excited about performing something new. I personally enjoyed sharing uncommon background material that hoped to enhance the audience experience.
  • BWW Review: CATS at Musical Theater Heritage - CATS is not a favorite musical play. This particular production, however, featured a director who disassembled the entire show and rebuilt it with young, talented actors for a small theater and limited costume/makeup. It was an especially involving experience.


Feature: VILNA: A FORGOTTEN RESISTANCE at White Theatre
Feature: VILNA: A FORGOTTEN RESISTANCE at White Theatre
April 17, 2023

“Vilna: A Resistance Story” is a new musical theater composition by Kevin and Allison Cloud with a book by Lisa Kenner Grissom. It tells the unfamiliar story of the roughly hundred thousand Vilna Jews before and during the Nazi Holocaust period.

Review: FORBIDDEN BROADWAY at Starlight Indoors
Review: FORBIDDEN BROADWAY at Starlight Indoors
March 10, 2023

“Forbidden Broadway” the musical parody performs on the actual indoor stage (not the Butterfield Stage) at Starlight Theatre in Swope Park in front of an audience of about 500 wildly amused patrons.    “Forbidden Broadway” is a thorough skewering of all those Broadway shows you’ve either seen or hoped to see.  Broadway sees its own reflection in a funhouse mirror and has a big belly laugh at its own expense.  

Review: CONDO-MONIUM at New Theatre & Restaurant
Review: CONDO-MONIUM at New Theatre & Restaurant
February 20, 2023

The North American Premiere engagement for CONDO-MONIUM opened last week at Overland Park’s New Theatre & Restaurant with a super cast and direction by Dennis D. Hennessey for an extended run through April 8. CONDO-MONIUM is an updated farce from a very similar British show called FLAT OUT. Both versions are by UK Journalist and Playwright Jennifer Selway.

Interview: Jennifer Selway Talks CONDO-MONIUM at New Theatre & Restaurant
Interview: Jennifer Selway Talks CONDO-MONIUM at New Theatre & Restaurant
February 19, 2023

It is not often that Kansas City audiences are fortunate enough to experience the North American premiere of a new British play in our own backyard. It is even less frequent that the playwright makes the monumental leap across the pond to share notes with the cast and production staff. Such is the case with British playwright, author, and journalist Jennifer Selway. The new production of her play, a British farce called “CONDO-MONIUM,” at Overland Park’s New Theatre & Restaurant for an extended run.

Review: MY FAIR LADY at Kauffman Center
Review: MY FAIR LADY at Kauffman Center
February 8, 2023

The core notion behind Lerner and Lowe’s 1956 “My Fair Lady.” This musical theater classic is the tale of an arrogant, egocentric, patrician, professor and phonetician named Henry Higgins and his fraught relationship with an attractive (behind the soot), unschooled, young flower-seller named Eliza Doolittle.  

Review: KINKY BOOTS at The White Theatre
Review: KINKY BOOTS at The White Theatre
January 30, 2023

Live, local musical theater in Kansas City opens for 2023 with a delightful, surprising, unexpected production of 2013’s six-time Tony Award winner “Kinky Boots.” The more or less true tale of “Kinky Boots,” performs in the unlikely setting of the White Theatre inside Overland Park’s Jewish Community Center. The show teaches life lessons about finding one’s passion and finding value in people different from ourselves.

Review: HADESTOWN at Kansas City Music Hall
Review: HADESTOWN at Kansas City Music Hall
January 18, 2023

Blend two ancient Greek myths, add the climate change crisis, a screed on capitalism, fears surrounding immigration, sprinkle in delightful, original folk music, and stir. The unlikely result is the 2019 eight-time Tony-winning folk opus “Hadestown,” an exceptional piece of musical theater.

Review: COME BLOW YOUR HORN at New Theatre Restaurant
Review: COME BLOW YOUR HORN at New Theatre Restaurant
December 10, 2022

New Theatre Restaurant’s new production of Neil Simon’s COME BLOW YOUR HORN is a holiday gift to its audiences. It is a charming, gentle entertainment that rekindles a time when you were too busy laughing to worry about anything else.

Review: PRETTY WOMAN THE MUSICAL at KC Music Hall
Review: PRETTY WOMAN THE MUSICAL at KC Music Hall
December 8, 2022

Very entertaining - if not high concept. Pretty Woman is a hoot.

Review: MAN OF LA MANCHA at Music Theater Heritage
Review: MAN OF LA MANCHA at Music Theater Heritage
October 10, 2022

Playing now at Music Theater Heritage through October 23 at Crown Center is an imaginative new production of 1965's Tony award winning Best Musical 'Man of La Mancha' offered by Musical Theater Heritage.

BWW Review: SPECTACULAR CHRISTMAS SHOW at Musical Theater Heritage
BWW Review: SPECTACULAR CHRISTMAS SHOW at Musical Theater Heritage
December 12, 2021

One of the annual challenges inherent to creating an absolutely new “Spectacular Christmas Show” at Musical l Theater Heritage is how to differentiate this year’s production from the thirteen editions that preceded it. I have been privileged to see eight of the fourteen iterations and can promise you that each production is professional, well performed, entertaining and very different from earlier versions. Sure, you will recognize some of the music, but it is unlikely that the key will be one you are pre-programed to have heard before or that the various harmonies will be hackneyed.

BWW Interview: Scott Moreau of JOHNNY & JUNE at New Theatre Restaurant
BWW Interview: Scott Moreau of JOHNNY & JUNE at New Theatre Restaurant
December 8, 2021

“Johnny & June” at New Theatre Restaurant is an outstanding, original, tribute concert reminiscent of what TV audiences might have enjoyed at home between the premiere of the “Johnny Cash TV Show” in 1969 and the final “Johnny Cash Christmas Special” in 1985.   This New Theatre Restaurant original features Scott Moreau as Johnny Cash, Ashley Pankow, as June Carter Cash, and Cathy Burnett as Country Comedian, Minnie Pearl.  

BWW Review: JOHNNY & JUNE at New Theatre Restaurant
BWW Review: JOHNNY & JUNE at New Theatre Restaurant
November 24, 2021

New Theatre Restaurant in Overland Park has opened an original and very enjoyable, new production, entitled “Johnny & June.” The show is a country music tribute concert to Johnny & June Carter Cash with Scott Moreau and Ashley Pankow as the title characters and with Cathy Barnett as comedian Minnie Pearl along with a five piece band.

BWW Review: COMPANY at Musical Theater Heritage
BWW Review: COMPANY at Musical Theater Heritage
November 7, 2021

Now through November 21, Musical Theater Heritage offers a super production of “Company,” Stephen Sondheim’s breakthrough 1970 musical. “Company” marks the first appearance of the indelible Sondheim musical voice we have heard so often since.

BWW Feature: VAN GOGH ALIVE at Stalight Theatre
BWW Feature: VAN GOGH ALIVE at Stalight Theatre
October 26, 2021

Imagine, if you can, the ability to see beyond the strict confines of a framed piece of art. 'Van Gogh Alive,' a joint project of Starlight Theatre and the Nelson Atkins Art Museum, offers visitors a total immersion into Vincent's familiar, Post-Impressionist vision by way of massive, all enveloping, thirty ft. tall projections, backed by carefully selected musical score, and the specter of the artist's own words culled from hundreds of letters written in his final years.

Kansas City Theatres Reopen With Health Precautions
Kansas City Theatres Reopen With Health Precautions
October 21, 2021

Kansas City live theater companies have mostly reopened after enduring eighteen months of dark stages and empty auditoriums. Curtains first rang down in New York and shortly here beginning March 12, 2020. As of today, October 21, 2021, more than 732,000 Americans have died as a result of one of several variants of the Covid-19 virus.

BWW Review: FOUR CHILDREN at Kansas City Actors' Theatre
BWW Review: FOUR CHILDREN at Kansas City Actors' Theatre
October 11, 2021

The World Premiere production of “Four Children” has been brought to life by the Kansas City Actors Theatre on the City Stage inside Union Station as a minimalist, sadly shocking view of war against children and on a number of levels. It is not to be missed during its several week run. The playwright has taken snippets from the diaries of four childhood victims of successful or attempted genocides. Their testimony is woven together paragraph by paragraph into a seamless, searing whole despite each being separated by decades and thousands of miles.

BWW Review: ESCAPE TO MARGARITAVILLE at Starlight Theatre
BWW Review: ESCAPE TO MARGARITAVILLE at Starlight Theatre
September 22, 2021

The final, outdoor, Broadway style show for the 2021 season at Starlight Theatre is Jimmy Buffet’s 2018 juke box musical “Escape to Margaritaville.” If you are a certified Jimmy Buffet fan, otherwise known as a Parrott-head, then this fun evening is absolutely for you.

BWW Review: MENOPAUSE THE MUSICAL at New Theatre Restaurant
BWW Review: MENOPAUSE THE MUSICAL at New Theatre Restaurant
September 21, 2021

“Menopause The Musical” has opened with an expected “Hot Flash” for an eight week run at Overland Park’s New Theatre Restaurant. The jokes and song parodies are all gleefully inappropriate.

BWW Review: AN EVENING WITH SIERRA BOGGESS at Musical Theater Heritage
BWW Review: AN EVENING WITH SIERRA BOGGESS at Musical Theater Heritage
September 18, 2021

“An evening with Sierra Boggess” at Musical Theater Heritage’s Quixotic Theater is a delightful way to spend any evening. Sierra was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s choice to create the role of Christine in the original production of the “Phantom” sequel “Love Never Dies.” American audiences outside of New York will know her opposite Phantom Ramin Karimloo from the PBS twenty-fifth anniversary concert version of “Phantom.”



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