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Alan Portner

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.




LEARN MORE ABOUT Alan Portner

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.


MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

Review: CLUE at New Theatre Restaurant
Review: CLUE at New Theatre Restaurant
July 7, 2025

Madcap! Frenetic! Hilarious! It is the New Theatre Restaurant production of CLUE. Clue is a comic murder-mystery tale based on the 1985 film of the same name which was based on the 1949 Parker Brothers board game that just about anyone who grew up in that period will surely have played at some point.

Review: MY FAIR LADY at Theatre In The Park
Review: MY FAIR LADY at Theatre In The Park
June 30, 2025

The strength of this production is unquestionably the superior musical treatments, including an excellent orchestra of twenty conducted by     Matt Richardson. Each of the leading characters is about as musically strong as it gets.

Review: THE ROOMMATE at Kansas City Actors' Theatre
Review: THE ROOMMATE at Kansas City Actors' Theatre
June 1, 2025

Kansas City Actors Theatre kicks off their twenty-first season with a super production of Jen Silverman’s THE ROOMMATE about two women who stumble awkwardly towards each other and learn a bit more than either one is ready to absorb.  This two hander has been kicking around regional theaters for about ten years before landing on the stage of the Booth Theater for a limited engagement.

Interview: Erick D. Patrick of THE LION KING at Kansas City Music Hall
Interview: Erick D. Patrick of THE LION KING at Kansas City Music Hall
May 15, 2025

Today we are speaking to one of the Lead Actors in Walt’s Disney’s production of “The Lion King.”  “The Lion King” opens on May 22 for a two week run through June 1 at the Kansas City Music Hall.

Review: JERSEY BOYS at New Theatre & Restaurant
Review: JERSEY BOYS at New Theatre & Restaurant
April 28, 2025

JERSEY BOYS at New Theatre Restaurant is a delightful evening out on the town.   The show tells the mostly true story of sixties pop legends Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. This show is an original and fun trip down memory lane with a singing group who offered a unique sound that still resonates almost seventy years later.  JERSEY BOYS was written before almost all the juke box musicals that have overwhelmed the Great White Way today. 

Review: DOUBT, A PARABLE at KC United Church Of Christ
Review: DOUBT, A PARABLE at KC United Church Of Christ
March 10, 2025

Kansas City Actors Theater presents an exceptional production of DOUBT, A PARABLE by John Patrick Shanley in the unexpected, but perfectly selected sanctuary of the Kansas City United Church of Christ in the Brookside area.

Review: RUMORS at New Theatre Restaurant
Review: RUMORS at New Theatre Restaurant
February 23, 2025

A super cast makes the most of Neil Simon’s 1988 word-salad comedy masterpiece entitled RUMORS. RUMORS opened last week at New Theater Restaurant in Overland Park.   This one is played strictly for laughs.

AMERICAN THEATRE GUILD
at KC Music Hall And Kauffman Center
AMERICAN THEATRE GUILD at KC Music Hall And Kauffman Center
February 19, 2025

The new 2025-2026 season schedule for the PNC Bank Broadway Series in Kansas City has been announced by American Theatre Guild Senior Director of Booking Operations Craig Aikman.  This year’s menu of traveling tour companies includes familiar offerings, but many more of the productions offered are still currently on Broadway or are making their premiere appearances in Kansas City,

Review: HAIRSPRAY at White Theatre
Review: HAIRSPRAY at White Theatre
February 4, 2025

HAIRSPRAY, a co-production of the White Theatre and the Black Repertory Theatre of Kansas City, is the kind of old-fashioned, joyous, musical theater experience that recalls a PAJAMA GAME, or a DAMN YANKEES, kind of show that is just pure entertainment.  Additionally, HAIRSPRAY has a point to make and a super cast with which to make it.

Review: BOOK OF DAYS at Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre
Review: BOOK OF DAYS at Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre
February 1, 2025

Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre kicks off its 2025 calendar year offerings with an offbeat murder mystery/character study by Lanford Wilson called BOOK OF DAYS performed at The Westport Bowery. The play, originally commissioned by Jeff Daniels in 1998 for his own small town (Michigan) theater company, is set in a southwestern Missouri rural community at a time not specifically named. Lanford Wilson is best known for his naturalistic use of dialogue.  His best- known work is the two-hander “Talley’s Folly.” BOOK OF DAYS draws on Wilson’s own theatrical roots in small-town America. He was from Lebanon, Missouri.

Review: PARADE at Kauffman Theatre
Review: PARADE at Kauffman Theatre
January 29, 2025

The touring company of PARADE, now playing at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, recounts the sad, but true tale of Leo Frank and Mary Phagan. Mr. Frank was almost certainly falsely convicted of Ms. Phagan’s April 27, 1913 murder due to an early twentieth century eruption of rampant antisemitism.

Review: CHICAGO: THE MUSICAL at Kauffman Theater
Review: CHICAGO: THE MUSICAL at Kauffman Theater
January 10, 2025

Chicago, the Musical, now playing at the Kauffman Center for Performing Arts, is a super evening out for you and your significant other.  It is a welcome respite from our incredible snow event last weekend. 

Review: FUNNY GIRL at Kansas City Music Hall
Review: FUNNY GIRL at Kansas City Music Hall
December 4, 2024

FUNNY GIRL is one of the crown gems of the American Musical Theater. Kansas City audiences will be treated to a first-class production of a show that many theater buffs know about but have never seen. Tuesday night’s performance starred Leah Platt in the lead role of Fanny Brice. Leah has a gangbuster voice fully displayed as she plows through an excellent score with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Bob Merrill.

Review: NUNSENSE at New Theatre Restaurant
Review: NUNSENSE at New Theatre Restaurant
December 3, 2024

Heating up the boards at New Theatre Restaurant now through February 2, 2025 is a new production of a reliable Off-Broadway Musical Review called NUNSENSE featuring a very funny quintet of comedy Sisters from the “Little Sisters of Olathe.”

Feature: FUNNY GIRL at KANSAS CITY MUSIC HALL
Feature: FUNNY GIRL at KANSAS CITY MUSIC HALL
December 3, 2024

One of the fun parts of reviewing shows in Kansas City is the occasional opportunity to meet and interview some of the talented touring performers who come through with road productions of Broadway shows.

Review: CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE... at KANSAS CITY MUSIC HALL
Review: CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE... at KANSAS CITY MUSIC HALL
November 25, 2024

Cirque Du Soleil’s excellent new Christmas Show, TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE… opens at the Kansas City Music Hall for eight performances beginning THE NIGHT BEFORE…Thanksgiving Day and continues through Sunday, December 1.

Review: THE MUSIC MAN at White Theatre
Review: THE MUSIC MAN at White Theatre
October 28, 2024

Meredith Willson’s THE MUSIC MAN opened this week at The White Theatre to an almost full house standing ovation. THE MUSIC MAN is a tribute to small town America around the turn of the twentieth century. The location is River City, Iowa on the Iowa/Illinois border in 1912.

Review: AN OLD-FASHIONED FAMILY MURDER at New Theatre & Restaurant
Review: AN OLD-FASHIONED FAMILY MURDER at New Theatre & Restaurant
September 23, 2024

Imagine a very funny stage comedy hidden behind a locked door, puzzler of a 1940s mystery movie and you’ve got AN OLD-FASHIONED FAMILY MURDER now playing at New Theatre and Restaurant. It is a World Premiere production. Double Tony-winning playwright Joe DiPietro has cleverly developed a recipe for an uproarious new farce. 



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