THE J

by Alan Portner - February 20, 2026

When the musical juggernaut titled “Hamilton” stormed into Kansas City’s gilded Music Hall this week, it arrives not as a relic of mid-2010s hype, but as a living, breathing re-invention of America’s founding fathers. A decade after its Broadway debut, the touring production proves that the ...

by Alan Portner - February 08, 2026

Now “playing” at Music Theatre Heritage inside Crown Center through February 22 is the latest iteration of the most produced modern musical play in history. It is called “The Fantasticks.” If “Fantasticks” is new to you, you are past due for a treat. If you are one of the thousands of p...

by Alan Portner - February 03, 2026

A new production of Jonathan Larson’s 1996 Pulitzer Prize Winner RENT, itself a re-interpretation of Puccini’s “La Boheme,” arrives like a time capsule that refuses to stay shut as a first ever co-production of the White Theatre (inside the Jewish Community Center) and Kansas City’s vener...

by Andrew Burrill - February 03, 2026

The Drum Closet is a deeply spiritual, urgent, and profoundly human coming-of-age story that resonates far beyond its Midwestern high school setting....

by Andrew Burrill - February 03, 2026

Casey and Diana, now running January 28 through February 15, 2026, is a luminous, heartbreaking, and deeply necessary work of theatre. Written by Nick Green and originally commissioned by the Stratford Festival of Canada, the play was developed to honor the real-life visit of Diana, Princess of Wale...

by Alan Portner - January 22, 2026

“Kimberly Akimbo” is a tiny, idiosyncratic musical with a cast of only nine actors that somehow manages to share the full Broadway experience with its opening night audience at Kansas City’s Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.  ...