Kansas City Theater Reviews

Review: LA CAGE AUX FOLLES at Music Theater Heritage
by Alan Portner - August 04, 2024

Looking for a little relief from the ongoing political season? If so, I should like to recommend the outrageous, belly-laugh of a show now playing in the Music Theatre Heritage Grand Theater on the fourth floor of Crown Center described by another audience member as “awesome.” It is the self-depreca...

Review: SISTER ACT THE MUSICAL At Theatre In The Park
by Alan Portner - July 29, 2024

The final show of Theater In The Park’s 2024 outdoor season is a musical version of the 1992 film comedy “SISTER ACT.”  ...

Review: THE LITTLE MERMAID at White Theatre
by Alan Portner - July 28, 2024

What did our critic think of THE LITTLE MERMAID at White Theatre?...

Review: MOULIN ROUGE THE MUSICAL at American Theatre Guild
by Alan Portner - July 26, 2024

MOULIN ROUGE The Musical Is something entirely new to the wave of Juke Box musicals overwhelming the Great White Way.  It is big, bold, brassy, and projects an altogether sexy sumptuousness while maintaining a sense of humor about itself. The audience leaves the theater on a massive sugar high, full...

Review: DISNEY'S NEWSIES at New Theatre & Restaurant
by Alan Portner - July 16, 2024

This production of NEWSIES, directed and choreographed by Jerry Jay Cranford and assisted by Christina Burton, features a cast of twenty-two dancers and singers, plus constantly in motion LED backdrops, a bridge flown high off the stage floor, combined with three matching stair/tower units strategic...

Review: BIG TROUBLE AT LITTLE YALTA at Central Standard Theatre
by Alan Portner - July 06, 2024

It is not often an audience gets the chance to participate in the developmental process of making significant art that also qualifies as fun. BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE YALTA by Neal Salvage may be that rare opportunity when parody, satire, and history can come together. ...

Review: ANASTASIA THE MUSICAL at Theatre In The Park
by Alan Portner - June 18, 2024

Second show this spring at the Shawnee Mission Park Theatre In The Park, is ANASTASIA, a 2017 fairy tale based on a wished-for result concerning the Russian Grand Duchess Anatasia. This, in turn, was based on an earlier 1997 animated film and an even earlier imagining in a 1956 film. ANASTASIA the ...

Review: PORGY AND BESS at Music Theater Heritage
by Alan Portner - June 10, 2024

Now playing in the Grand Theater at Crown Center is Music Theater Heritage’s production of Gershwin’s “PORGY AND BESS.”  This is an example of MTH going “all in” on a very challenging show and producing an extremely credible final product. ...

Review: THE LEHMAN TRILOGY at Kansas City Actors Theatre
by Alan Portner - May 26, 2024

The Lehman Trilogy studies American Dream Mythology as seen through the eyes of Italian playwright and poet Stefano Massini. The English translation by Ben Power transfigures itself into an absorbing and poignant exercise in stellar storytelling as one might imagine it by three brothers around a met...

Review: HOT THE MUSICAL at Unicorn Theatre
by Alan Portner - May 17, 2024

In performance now through June 2 is HOT THE MUSICAL, an entertaining and original new take on the Greek Mythology surrounding Helen of Troy and the Trojan Wars. The show is staged at Unicorn Theatre on Main Street. This one is definitely worth your time....

Review: MJ THE MUSICAL at KC Music Hall
by Alan Portner - May 08, 2024

Michael is Roman Banks with a spot-on almost miraculous personification of the Ing of Pop.  The dancing, the voice, the persona.  They are all there.  Banks offers a remarkable performance.  ...

Review: SQUABBLES at New Theatre Restaurant
by Alan Portner - May 05, 2024

For those of you who feel the need for a light, fun evening of laugh out loud comedy and a delightful meal, let me recommend “SQUABBLES” a live comedy play that has Just opened at New Theatre Restaurant in Overland Park.  “SQUABBLES” is a light comedy with an unusually tight and experienced cast fea...

Review: ROCKY THE MUSICAL at MTKC Pro
by Alan Portner - April 15, 2024

The Music Theatre Kansas City – (Pro) KC Premiere production of the 2014’s Broadway version of “Rocky the Musical” is surprisingly worth your time.  It is hard to have avoided Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky Franchise” beginning as a sleeper, low budget film hit in 1976.  So far there have been six “Roc...

Review: STRANGER SINGS, THE PARODY MUSICAL at The Black Box
by Steve Wilson - April 07, 2024

But on the upside, there is always Hawkins, Indiana, nothing strange ever happens there. Unless you are in the upside/down and Hawkins is inside The Black Box, for Padgett Productions' phenomenal Kansas City premiere of STRANGER SINGS, THE PARODY MUSICAL....

Review: CLUE at Kauffman Center
by Alan Portner - April 04, 2024

Three quarters of a century following its first North American game release, a top-quality touring play version of “Clue, A New Comedy” has appeared set in a mansion located in suburban Washington, D.C.   At the risk of sounding like a bad horror novel or even worse “B” movie, all the action takes p...

Review: GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER at White Theatre At The JCC
by Alan Portner - March 19, 2024

“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” is a very funny idea and the 2014 Tony winner for best new Musical.  It is currently playing at the White Theatre inside the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park through March 24....

Review: SHOUT! THE MOD MUSICAL at Black Box Theater
by Alan Portner - March 12, 2024

Shout! The Mod Musical” is more of a loose musical revue, than a musical play. It is costumed and set for London during the period I was emerging from my teenage cocoon years into young adulthood. I clearly remember the performers who introduced the music from this show into the canon....

Review: MAMMA MIA! at Kansas City Music Hall
by Alan Portner - March 06, 2024

Plain old feel-good musicals are rare. The “Dancing Queen” of this limited genre is “Mamma Mia!” The 25th Anniversary tour of this truly enjoyable evening out at the theatre plays through Sunday, March 10, 2024, at the Kansas City Music Hall in downtown Kansas City....

Review: ALOHA FROM VEGAS at New Theatre & Restaurant
by Alan Portner - February 17, 2024

Victor Trevino, Jr. as Elvis Presley is brilliant in New Theatre & Restaurant’s new Tribute Concert to the “King” called “Aloha from Vegas.”  To get much closer to Elvis, you need a time machine. ...

Review: THE PROM at White Theatre
by Alan Portner - January 30, 2024

What did our critic think of THE PROM at White Theatre? Running now at the White Theatre inside the Jewish Community Center is a production of a new musical dealing with the serious subjects of celebrity, gender identity and social intolerance run wild that somehow still offers the audience a real f...

Review: GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY at Kauffman Center
by Alan Portner - January 24, 2024

Connor McPherson’s “Girl from the North Country” enjoyed the Kansas City opening of its first national tour at the Kauffman Center on Tuesday night for a one week residency. McPherson has written and directed a “slice of life” show and filled in the blank spaces with songs from Bob Dylan’s career. ...

Review: GASLIGHT at Union Station
by Alan Portner - January 20, 2024

They say you never forget your first.  That was certainly the situation for a former Scotland Yard Police Inspector named Rough (played by John Rensenhouse).  Oddly, Inspector Rough had no known first name. Rough’s first bloody murder case in 1865 remained unsolved fifteen years after the event....

Review: JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG at MET's Warwick Theatre
by Alan Portner - January 13, 2024

“Judgement at Nuremberg” at Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre’s (MET) Warwick Theatre is a fictional rendering of the 1947 Judge’s War Crime Trial held at Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany. “Judgement at Nuremberg” is a painful remembrance of an attempt to both punish those accountable for the barbarisms comm...

Review: TINA at Kansas City Music Hall
by Alan Portner - December 07, 2023

The sheer spectacle of “Tina” is amazing.  Emphasizing the fact that Tina Turner was one of a kind, the gravely-voiced, sexy, full out singing style of Tina is so stressful on the performer’s voices, this show uses two actresses to play her on alternate evenings. ...

Review: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN at New Theatre & Restaurant
by Alan Portner - December 02, 2023

“Catch Me If You Can” at New Theatre Restaurant is a comedic turn on the Murder Mystery genre. It will keep you guessing from the opening curtain until the big reveal at the end of the show. San Francisco Marketing Consultant Daniel Corbin (Ross Hellwig) has sneaked away for a holiday weekend with ...