Alan Portner

FUNNY GIRL is one of the crown gems of the American Musical Theater. Kansas City audiences will be treated to a first-class production of a show that many theater buffs know about but have never seen. Tuesday night’s performance starred Leah Platt in the lead role of Fanny Brice. Leah has a gangbuster voice fully displayed as she plows through an excellent score with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Bob Merrill.

Heating up the boards at New Theatre Restaurant now through February 2, 2025 is a new production of a reliable Off-Broadway Musical Review called NUNSENSE featuring a very funny quintet of comedy Sisters from the “Little Sisters of Olathe.”

One of the fun parts of reviewing shows in Kansas City is the occasional opportunity to meet and interview some of the talented touring performers who come through with road productions of Broadway shows.

Cirque Du Soleil’s excellent new Christmas Show, TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE… opens at the Kansas City Music Hall for eight performances beginning THE NIGHT BEFORE…Thanksgiving Day and continues through Sunday, December 1.

Meredith Willson’s THE MUSIC MAN opened this week at The White Theatre to an almost full house standing ovation. THE MUSIC MAN is a tribute to small town America around the turn of the twentieth century. The location is River City, Iowa on the Iowa/Illinois border in 1912.

Imagine a very funny stage comedy hidden behind a locked door, puzzler of a 1940s mystery movie and you’ve got AN OLD-FASHIONED FAMILY MURDER now playing at New Theatre and Restaurant. It is a World Premiere production. Double Tony-winning playwright Joe DiPietro has cleverly developed a recipe for an uproarious new farce. 

Kansas City audiences do not often get the opportunity to see World Premiere productions of plays by Tony Award winning playwrights.  This makes the current New Theatre & Restaurant production of Joe DiPietra’s new play “An Old-Fashioned Family Murder” starring “All In The Family’s” Sally Strothers exceptional.

It is a quest to commit the perfect murder, and it almost works. “Dial M For Murder” is the twisted story of a failed novelist who has married an heiress and has decided to do her in to inherit her millions.

Victor Wishna’s new play “Tree of Life” deserves an audience beyond its current World Premiere production ending on September 22.   It is a blessing (a bracha) to those fortunate enough to see the premiere engagement. This unusual and original new play is directed by Jonah Greene.

The White Theatre presents a world premiere production of “Tree of Life,” a new two-act play, by Kansas City career writer and playwright Victor Wishna.  “Tree of Life” documents the journey of a sacred “Torah” that has rested in the arc of a small-town Iowa synagogue over more than a century.

One suggestion for guests on is a trip down to the Kansas City Music Hall to witness a new production by Montreal’s famous Cirque Du Soleil.   The new show is called “Twas the Night Before…”  It is the first ever holiday themed Cirque in the almost fifty-year history of the company.

It is funny. It is a slice of life. It is a literal peek behind the curtain. Kansas City Actors Theatre production of Alice Childress’s TROUBLE IN MIND allows audiences a long-delayed opportunity to vision America (and its theatrical community) as it appeared in 1955 from an African American point of view. I was struck by how much our country has matured (mostly for the better) over eighty years.

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-deprecating, six-time Tony Winning, best musical of 1984, “La Cage aux Folles.”

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

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

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, fully entertained. The dancing, vocals, lighting, sets, and orchestrations are all “par excellence.”   It may not be challenging  theater, but MOULIN ROUGE is great entertainment. 

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 strategically moving about the stage, and an eleven-piece orchestra. 

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.

BIG TROUBLE AT LITTLE YALTA is a comedic take by Neil Salvage on a not very well remembered, but extremely important meeting of world leaders during the waning days of the World War II in Europe.  Almost all of what you see in our play is fiction, but a little understanding of what really transpired may help you understand and appreciate the comedy playing out in front of you.

Recently, I watched and chuckled at an early rehearsal of a show called BIG TROUBLE AT LITTLE YALTA.  Bob Paisley's Central Standard Theatre presents the World Premiere of YALTA scheduled for July 3 through July 7 at the Just Off-Broadway Theatre at 3051 Central in Kansas City.