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 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...