Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre continues its season with the North American premiere of “The Shawshank Redemption,” taken from the same source material on which writer/director Frank Darabont based his memorable 1994
Stephen Karam’s “The Humans,” a big hit in New York and London, is a play with an intriguing premise, detailed characters and a palpable sense of foreboding. The production now
Virtually every emotional trauma and competitive humiliation we associate with high school is on full display in Jocelyn Bioh’s “School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play,” now running at
Even in early twentieth century Russia, raw capitalism was destroying natural beauty and remaking the landscape. But it was doing more than that. It was transforming a class system, forcing the landed gentry to scrounge for money to keep up mortgage payments while merchants descended from serfs had the cash to buy ancestral estates out […]
Annual holiday shows are a tradition in Kansas City, but only this year did I make it to “It’s a Wonderful Life,” now in its third season at the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre. Final verdict: It was worth the wait. The MET production of Joe Landry’s adaptation of the classic 1947 Frank Capra film fills the […]
The stage has never been a comfortable home for sports stories — mainly because you can’t really show the fights, games or marathons — but Sarah DeLappe’s “The Wolves” is a remarkable effort to capture the politics, angst and hormone-driven conflicts on a girls’ soccer team. This play earned praise in New York and Chicago, […]
MTH Theater at Crown Center offers up lively entertainment packaged around a history lesson in a spirited, scaled-down production of “Show Boat,” the 1927 classic by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Director Jeff Church assembles a talented company to bring the story to life and George Harter, MTH founder, serves as emcee and history […]
Strong performances elevate the Spinning Tree production of “The Nance,” Douglas Carter Beane’s 2013 comic drama that offers a sobering look at what it meant to be a gay man in New York some 80 years ago. I saw the original Broadway production of “The Nance” a few years back so let me say up […]
If you wonder why some members of the working class became Trump supporters, then check out the Unicorn Theatre’s production of “Sweat,” a drama that won playwright Lynn Nottage her second Pulitzer Prize. Nottage depicts racial animosity, class resentment and economic disparity as friendships are destroyed and lives forever altered in this carefully constructed play. […]
