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Alan Portner - Page 4

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.


Review: IS HE DEAD at Olathe Civic Theatre Association
Review: IS HE DEAD at Olathe Civic Theatre Association
May 13, 2023

Anything with the name Mark Twain on it draws a crowd.  “Twainiacs” like me will always show up.  This particular piece of Clemens’ literary output languished inside a file cabinet at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley for a century.   It is difficult to know what to say about IS HE DEAD. It is a bold choice by Director Charlotte Gilman and the OCTA Board.   Gilman has chosen to direct IS HE DEAD in the imagined style of the time.  It is easy to imagine in a touring Chautauqua tent show in rural Kansas or Missouri at the end of the nineteenth century.

Review: SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM at Kauffman Center For The Arts
Review: SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM at Kauffman Center For The Arts
May 11, 2023

WWe lost a giant of the arts on November 26, 2021.  Steven Sondheim was ninety-one years old.  Now eighteen months later, Lyric Opera has produced James Lapine’s 2008 retrospective SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM of his friend’s life work.

Feature: EDDIE: THE FRIENDSHIP THAT CHANGED HISTORY at White Theatre
Feature: EDDIE: THE FRIENDSHIP THAT CHANGED HISTORY at White Theatre
May 9, 2023

On the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel, a not commonly cited friendship, between President Harry S. Truman and a Kansas City friend may well have had an outsized influence on the success of the new tiny country.   That man was Eddie Jacobson, Truman’s close friend since 1905. Both Truman and Jacobson served in the same World War I artillery unit, became business partners, and remained lifelong friends.   

Previews: CIRQUE DU SOLEIL CORTEO at T-Mobile Center
Previews: CIRQUE DU SOLEIL CORTEO at T-Mobile Center
May 3, 2023

The Cirque du Soleil production “CORTEO” is scheduled for performances over four days beginning on May 25 and extending through May 28 at Kansas City’s T-Mobile Center in the Downtown Power and Light District. This powerful and complex production, written and directed by honored Swiss Director Daniele Finzi Pasco. been touring internationally since its premiere in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on April 21, 2005.

Review: MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET at New Theatre & Restaurant
Review: MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET at New Theatre & Restaurant
May 1, 2023

MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET has returned to New Theatre & Restaurant after a five-year absence. For fans of early 1950s Rock N Roll music, finding a great production of the QUARTET is equivalent to stumbling upon the Holy Grail while flashing on their teenage years. MDQ is entertaining.

Review: ANNIE at Kauffman Center
Review: ANNIE at Kauffman Center
April 19, 2023

If a musical comedy could be served up as comfort food, that show would look a lot like “Annie.”  Audiences have been lapping up the sweet story of Little Orphan Annie since it opened on Broadway in 1977.

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.



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