Alan Portner - Page 2

Imagine the Grimm bedtime stories presented on steroids buttressed by the occasional homage to animated motion picture favorites.  This is the basic recipe for “Into The Woods,” an imaginative and odd musical mashup of the Grimm’s tales with music, libretto, and lyrics from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine performed at the Jewish Community Center’s fine White Theatre.

Aaron Sorkin’s 2018 stage re-imagination of the classic Harper Lee novel “To Kill A Mockingbird” opened Tuesday at the Kansas City Music Hall for a one week run.  It is one of the finest touring companies of any play I’ve been privileged to witness in many years.  “Mockingbird” stars well-known actor Richard Thomas in a stellar turn as the lead character of Atticus Finch.

Seldom does an entertainment attain a level of fiendish absurdity that affords audiences belly busting hilarity after more than forty years.  The indoor space at Theatre in the Park’s Johnson County Heritage Center offers a super production of 1982’s “Little Shop of Horror.”

A new production of a light comedy called “Always a Bridesmaid” is about a week into a three month run at New Theatre Restaurant.   The show (by playwrights Jessie Joes, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten) is a frothy, light, and entertaining look into the lives of three female high school  buddies from a Central Virginia town.  The central attraction is TV and Motion Picture actress Morgan Fairchild as Monette, the many times married mantrap and her three long-time friends.

Kansas City Actors Theater last week opened their new production of “Skeleton Crew” a relatively new (2016) play by Dominique Morisseau on the City Stage located on the lower level of Union Station.

“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.”

“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.

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 is significantly more Irving Berlin music in the staged musical than in the 1954 film. 

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.  Cranford has assembled a cast of Broadway belters and fine dancers to tell the tale of a Supremes-like black female singing trio around 1960 and in the decade to follow.   The show is flashy and impeccably costumed.  The set, while relatively simple, is technically superior. LED screens are used across the background to simulate locations.  Not much was spared when the producer was asked to fund this production.  Choreography by Courtney German is frenetic, well drilled, and perfectly appropriate for this genre.  The musical score is spectacular by Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen.   Several numbers (including the title track) became number one hits outside the show.

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.

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 DREAMCOAT.

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 greatest musical play of all time. 

“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-notch cast.  The venue could have been built specifically for this production

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 will re-awaken your childhood dream of “running off to join the circus.”

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 relationships and this show is set up to be a very tough sell. Remarkably, TOOTSIE (The Musical) absolutely works.

EDDIE, the play, ends with the recognition of Israel by the United States.  A short, two- paragraph statement immediately conveyed the backing of the world’s wealthiest nation with the world’s most powerful military.  But that was not the end of the story either for Israel or for Eddie Jacobson.

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 of Westport clothier and Harry Truman presidential buddy Eddie Jacobson for two only performances at the White Theatre inside the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park on May 13 and May 14.

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 about IS HE DEAD. It is a bold choice by Director Charlotte Gilman and the OCTA Board.   Gilman has chosen to direct IS HE DEAD in the imagined style of the time.  It is easy to imagine in a touring Chautauqua tent show in rural Kansas or Missouri at the end of the nineteenth century.

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.

On the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel, a not commonly cited friendship, between President Harry S. Truman and a Kansas City friend may well have had an outsized influence on the success of the new tiny country.   That man was Eddie Jacobson, Truman’s close friend since 1905. Both Truman and Jacobson served in the same World War I artillery unit, became business partners, and remained lifelong friends.