Alan Portner - Page 10

'Of Mice and Men' transports us to Steinbeck's world on the Monterey Peninsula of California during the Great Depression prior to World War II.  It was (and still is) mainly an agricultural breadbasket area.  As the play opens, two of these men approach a ranch in Soledad California. They are George Milton (Jake Walker) and Lennie Small (Rusty Sneary).  George is a bright if uneducated man.  Lennie is a giant, but agonizingly slow.   

Now directing his first major show for the Kansas City Repertory Theatre is Interim Artistic Director Jason Chanos.   Chanos has been the Associate Artistic Director at the Rep since 2015 in addition to teaching acting at UMKC.  He holds a BA from the University of Northern Colorado and an MFA from UMKC.      Opening on Friday, October 26 (after a week in previews) is the UMKC/KCRep co-production of Steinbeck's 1937 "Of Mice And Men" at the Copaken Theatre inside the H&R Block Building in downtown Kansas City.

Powerful story, top notch stagecraft, and excellent acting make the Unicorn production of 'Sweat' by Lynn Nottage a must see before you cast your ballot on November 6.  'Sweat' begins to explain divisions in the 2018 electorate and how they developed.  The Pulitzer committee agreed and awarded this work the prize for drama in 2017.

"In The Heights" is Lin-Manuel Miranda's premiere effort at an entirely new way of telling a story through musical theater. "Theater In The Park's" fine indoor production of Miranda's "Heights" is a fine Kansas City area community interpretation of this 2008 four Tony award winner.

'Always… Patsy Cline' at New Theatre Restaurant in Overland Park is a delightful, two-hour sojourn into mid-twentieth century 'Country and Western' music.   Patsy Cline was an early country singer who achieved crossover success and a very loyal listener following.

Lyric Opera of Kansas City steps off its 2018-2019 season with a bravura interpretation of 1957's "West Side Story." It is difficult to say enough good things about this Lyric Opera of Kansas City presentation.

'Radio Golf' is the tenth and final work of African-American Playwright August Wilson's 'Century Cycle' of plays. This simple, yet representative production by KC Melting Pot Theatre is performed at the Just Off Broadway Theatre.

The characters in Eugene O'Neil's "Moon For The Misbegotten," now being performed by the Kansas City Actors' Theatre at Union Station, are tours de force for serious actors and serious audiences.   The story, while not autobiographical, follows the life path of O'Neil's brother James.  They are, in some ways, similar to the tragic heroes of William Shakespeare and the tortured souls of Tennessee Williams.

“Elegy For A Lady” is a tiny fragment of a play lasting no more than forty minutes, but also an insight into the mind of American playwright Arthur Miller.  Instead of being performed in a traditional theater, Bob Paisley and Heidi Van inhabit their characters inside a tiny lady's boutique in the Crossroads among, rather than in front of, a tiny audience of about twenty people.

Alan Lerner and Frederick Lowe's 1956 musical megahit 'My Fair Lady' opened last weekend at Musical Theater Heritage inside its three-venue Crown Center complex with a re-imagination by Kansas City's Heidi Van. This cast is multi-racial and sensitive to the modern relative roles of men and women in today's society.

The Spencer Theater, KC Rep audience roared its approval at the world-premiere, musical production of Steve Kruger's 1998 novel 'Last Days Of Summer.'   In collaboration with Composer Jason Howland and Director Jeff Calhoun, Kruger's new play takes its first full scale step toward a hoped for long run on the Great White Way

'Love Never Dies' is absolutely worth seeing.  It is lush.  The voices are beyond exceptional.  Sets, costumes, and effects are haunting. The direction by Australians Simon Phillips and choreography by Graeme Murphy AO completely envelop the space allowed.  The traveling pit orchestra conducted by Dale Rieling is as good as it gets.  There are several, new, show stopping songs and lots of achingly beautiful echoes of the original Phantom score.

Great theater requires a willing suspension of disbelief.  'The Producers' by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan requires a willing embrace of 1940's Catskill schlock and shtick.  That said, MTH's 'The Producers' is so much inspired silliness, so well performed, and so meticulously put together, it is tough to stop giggling and smirking and groaning at the awful, hysterical, politically in-correct, funny, one-liners.   The Saturday night, Crown Center audience for 'The Producers' thoroughly embarrassed itself and was delighted to do so.

'The Wizard Of Oz' as produced by Kansas City's 'Theater League' in the cavernous outdoor concert venue now called Providence Hospital Amphitheater

Donna Sheridan (Shanna Jones) was the lead singer in one of the early female power trios, 'Donna and the Dynamos,' back in the summers of love period in the late 1960s. She found the love of her life, Sam Carmichael (John Franklin), and lost him to a previous personal commitment while Donna and her crew performed among the Greek Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. That summer Donna had two rebound relationships with other men. All three relationships were documented in her diary. Donna became pregnant by whom Donna is not sure.

Johnson County's Community Theatre in the Park performs a top quality and charming version of Steven Sondheim's 1987 musical mashup of every fairy tale you have ever had told to you as a child.  We've got Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella and her dysfunctional clan, Rapunzel in her tower, Little Red Riding Hood, her wolfy friend, a couple of princes, an odd looking guy never named but definitely related to Rumpelstiltskin, and even a mention of Snow White snoozing in her crystal casket surrounded by suspicious looking short guys. 

Two sold out audiences leaped to their feet in group appreciation of 'Disney's Newsies,' a co-production of the Jewish Community Center's White Theatre (in Overland Park) and The Coterie Theatre (normally operating out of Crown Center).

'South Pacific' at the huge 'Theatre In The Park' outdoor amphitheater is a super community theater rendition of the Rogers and Hammerstein 1949 ground-breaking classic.   The scene is a tiny island on the stepping stone chain of Polynesian Islands being retaken by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps following the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941.

The 2018 edition of the 'Heart of America Shakespeare Festival' offers a very nice production of Shakespeare's 1599 comedy 'Much Ado About Nothing.' 'Much Ado' is a comedy/farce in many ways similar to other Shakespearian comedies 'Taming of the Shrew,' and 'The Merchant of Venice.' All three plays depend on misdirection and romances somehow gone way awry.

Next up at the White Theatre is a joint production with Crown Center's Coterie Theatre of “Disney's Newsies;” a live stage musical version of the 1992 musical film. “Newsies” recalls the real-life newsboys' strike of 1899.