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Review: ROCK OF AGES Comes to Kansas City at The Warwick Theatre
Opening night for ROCK OF AGES at the Warwick Theatre was a performance for the ages. Nick Padgett, Producing Artistic Director of Padgett Productions, co-directs the musical with Matthew Allen, which runs through August 6th at the Warwick. The choreography was designed by Allen and the musical dire...
Review: IRVING BERLIN'S WHITE CHRISTMAS at Theatre In The Park
Shawnee Mission Park’s “Theatre in the Park,” marks the season with an oddly appropriate July production of “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.” The item up for view and review is a very nice production of Irving Berlin classic songs and the familiar tale based on a 1954 movie of the same ...
Review: DREAMGIRLS at New Theatre & Restaurant
The point of musical theater (for most people) is pure entertainment, and the New Theatre & Restaurant original production of 1981’s DREAMGIRLS hits the bullseye. DREAMGIRLS is directed by Jerry Jay Cranford and stars a comparatively large, twenty-one member cast backed by an eight-piece orchestra...
Review: LEGALLY BLONDE: THE MUSICAL at Starlight Theatre
Broadway veteran Carrie St. Louis is Starlight’s Elle Woods. She is super in the role. St. Louis is cute and bubbly, but no dumb bunny with a huge mezzo-soprano voice that dominates a theater with eight thousand seats. She is also a determined and skilled dancer....
Review: JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT at White Theatre
The White Theatre at the Jewish Community Center closes out its eighteenth season with an excellent production of a story ripped from the scrolls of Genesis, chapters 37-50. It is an early sung-through musical collaboration by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREA...
Review: GYPSY: A MUSICAL FABLE at Music Theater Heritage
Part of the fun of live theater is revisiting favorite materials and seeing how new directors and new actors re-interpret the material. Often, the resulting production is only peripherally connected to the original show. One example of this phenomenon is “Gypsy: A Musical Fable,” often calle...
Review: MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS at Theatre In The Park
“Meet Me In St. Louis,” the onstage version of the 1944 film of the same name, is a delightful evening outdoors at Shawnee Mission Park’s Theatre In The Park. I cannot recall being as pleasantly surprised by a show as I was by this one. It is a broadly drawn slice of Americana performed by...
Review: EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL at Warwick Theatre
“Look Who’s Evil Now,” it’s the cast and crew of Padgett Productions EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL, which opened Friday, June 2 at the Warwick Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. The splatter zone was sold-out for the opening, and the raucous crowd only added to an exciting hilarious romp at the cabin...
Review: Cirque du Soleil's CORTEO At T-Mobile Center
If, by chance, you are still looking for something fun to do with your visitors this holiday weekend, I highly recommend Cirque du Soleil’s incredible “Corteo” now playing at the T-Mobile Center. This is family entertainment of the first order; unlike almost anything you will ever have witness...
Review: TOOTSIE at Starlight Theatre
TOOTSIE (The Musical), is a fun opening evening for the seventy-first season of Starlight Theatre at Swope Park across from the Kansas City Zoo. Tootsie (The Film) was so good it is preserved it on the United States National Film Registry. Add the sea-change in attitudes surrounding same-sex relatio...
Review: EDDIE: THE FRIENDSHIP THAT CHANGED HISTORY At White Theatre
It is hard to imagine a tougher gig for any actor than a one-man show about an historical personage; especially in front of people who may have known that person in life or are related to him by blood. This is the towering achievement of actor Victor Raider-Wexler as he conjured up the living being ...
Review: STEEL MAGNOLIAS at MTH Theatre
Padgett Productions, best known for ROCKY HORROR and EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL, has stepped from its usual genres to inspire Kansas City audiences with the comedy-drama STEEL MAGNOLIAS, and Kansas City should be glad it has. What a fantastic show to bring to the main stage of MTH Theatre at Crown Cente...
Review: IS HE DEAD at Olathe Civic Theatre Association
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 wh...
Review: SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM at Kauffman Center For The Arts
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....
Review: MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET at New Theatre & Restaurant
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
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....
Review: THE CRAFT: AN UNAUTHORIZED PARODY OPENS IN KANSAS CITY at The Westport Bowery
They put a spell on me, those crazy witches and their craft. The magic of THE CRAFT: AN UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY opened Thursday, March 30 at The Westport Bowery in Kansas City....
Review: THE RIPPLE, THE WAVE THAT CARRIED ME HOME at KC Rep
Ms. Anderson’s work is an excellent example of voices that need to be heard. It takes on the segregation fight not with a high-level history book approach, but from the very ground level, the people fighting the fight and feeling the scars of battle....
Review: FORBIDDEN BROADWAY at Starlight Indoors
“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 eith...
Review: CONDO-MONIUM at New Theatre & Restaurant
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 v...
Review: MY FAIR LADY at Kauffman Center
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 E...
Review: FLOOD at KC Rep
This reviewer has always been a fan of absurdist theatre, so it was with considerable excitement that she attended the evening's performance, eager to see a premiere that has come a mere 3 years after its workshop reading in 2019 (thanks again, covid). Happily, this reviewer can safely say she was n...
Review: KINKY BOOTS at The White Theatre
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 Jew...
Review: HADESTOWN at Kansas City Music Hall
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: WHO'S HOLIDAY, A CHRISTMAS FAVORITE NOW PLAYING IN KANSAS CITY at Musical Theater Heritage
If you want to see a hilarious Christmas show, then it’s to WHO’S HOLIDAY you should go. Padgett Productions in Kansas City brings back the holiday favorite in the Ruby Room at the Musical Theatre Heritage Theatre in Crown Center. This Christmas delight, unlike any other you may see, is directed...
Videos
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Jefferson Starship Capital Region MU Health Care Amphitheater (9/27-9/27) |
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WICKED Music Hall (8/12-8/30) |
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Once Upon a One More Time Music Theatre Kansas City (6/12-6/14) |
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A Musical Journey on Canvas Pizza Haus - Jefferson City (5/22-5/23) |
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Danielle Nicole Band Saloon Stage At Knuckleheads Saloon (6/20-6/20) |
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SHREK The Musical Theatre in the Park (5/22-5/30) |
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Xanadu Music Theatre Kansas City (7/17-7/19) |
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The Phantom of the Opera Music Hall Kansas City (12/06-12/06) |
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Guns N’ Roses Busch Stadium (8/16-8/16) |
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The Addams Family Theatre Lawrence (6/05-6/21) |
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