Kansas City Theater Reviews Page 2

Review: TICK, TICK...BOOM! at The Black Box
by Steve Wilson - September 09, 2023

The Barn Players' production of TICK, TICK. . .BOOM! opened Friday, September 8 at the Black Box Theatre inside the Johnson County Arts & Heritage Center in Overland Park. Directed by Kipp Simmons, with vocal arrangements and orchestrations by Stephen Oremus the musical runs at the center through Se...

Review: GRAND HORIZONS at Kansas City Actors Theatre
by Alan Portner - August 20, 2023

“Grand Horizons” is the tongue-in–cheek moniker given the senior development to which the fifty-year, mostly amicable marriage of Bill and Nancy French has recently been downsized. “Buckle your seat belts… it is going to be a bumpy (and funny) ride.”...

Review: A CHORUS LINE at Music Theater Heritage
by Alan Portner - August 13, 2023

“A Chorus Line” from Music Theater Heritage is a not-to- be missed interpretation of a challenging show. Tickets are available online at www.musictheaterheritage.com online or by telephone at 816.221.6987....

Review: LITTLE WOMEN THE BROADWAY MUSICAL at The Black Box at The Johnson County Arts and Heritage Center
by Steve Wilson - August 13, 2023

What did our critic think of LITTLE WOMEN THE BROADWAY MUSICAL at The Black Box At The Johnson County Arts And Heritage Center?...

Review: ROCK OF AGES Comes to Kansas City at The Warwick Theatre
by Steve Wilson - July 24, 2023

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
by Alan Portner - July 18, 2023

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 name.  There...

Review: DREAMGIRLS at New Theatre & Restaurant
by Alan Portner - July 13, 2023

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
by Alan Portner - July 09, 2023

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
by Alan Portner - July 05, 2023

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
by Alan Portner - June 19, 2023

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 called the ...

Review: MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS at Theatre In The Park
by Alan Portner - June 18, 2023

“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 a top-n...

Review: EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL at Warwick Theatre
by Steve Wilson - June 04, 2023

“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 in the ...

Review: Cirque du Soleil's CORTEO At T-Mobile Center
by Alan Portner - May 26, 2023

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 witnessed. It...

Review: TOOTSIE at Starlight Theatre
by Alan Portner - May 20, 2023

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
by Alan Portner - May 16, 2023

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
by Steve Wilson - May 14, 2023

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
by Alan Portner - 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...

Review: SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM at Kauffman Center For The Arts
by Alan Portner - 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....

Review: MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET at New Theatre & Restaurant
by Alan Portner - May 01, 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
by Alan Portner - 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....

Review: THE CRAFT: AN UNAUTHORIZED PARODY OPENS IN KANSAS CITY at The Westport Bowery
by Steve Wilson - March 31, 2023

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
by Kelly Luck - March 19, 2023

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
by Alan Portner - 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 ho...

Review: CONDO-MONIUM at New Theatre & Restaurant
by Alan Portner - 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 ver...

Review: MY FAIR LADY at Kauffman Center
by Alan Portner - February 08, 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 D...