Alan Portner

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.