Beetlejuice (photo by Matthew Murphy)
Usher in 2025 with the best that KC stages have to offer. Check out these productions — well-worn and brand new — warming up local stages when it’s cold outside.
NUNSENSE
Now through Feb. 2 | New Theatre Restaurant
TV favorite Vicki Lewis returns to Kansas City for New Theatre’s holiday show, one of the longest-running musicals in off-Broadway history. For those new to the planet, five Sisters get together to stage a talent show so they can bury four other nuns stuffed in the convent freezer. It’s all wacky fun, even if you’re not already in the habit. Tickets at www.newtheatre.com.
CHICAGO
Jan. 7 – 12 | Kauffman Center
That whoopy spot where the gin is cold and the piano’s hot returns to KC, hometown of its celebrated composer John Kander, for a week of bumps, grinds, mayhem and murder, all in the hallowed name of musical comedy fun. Tickets at www.kansascity.broadway.com.
PARADE
Jan. 28 – Feb. 2 | Kauffman Center
Winner of multiple Tony® Awards including 2023’s Best Musical Revival, Jason Robert Brown’s uplifting score and Alfred Uhry’s touching story dramatize the 1913 trial of a Jewish factory manager wrongly accused of a murder that aroused antisemitic tensions in the Deep South. A cautionary tale in these troubling times. Tickets at www.kansascity.broadway.com.
JUST ASK
Jan. 29 – Feb. 23 | Coterie Theatre in Crown Center
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s NY Times best-selling book has been adapted for children’s theater in this Coterie world premiere. As they work to create a garden, young people with different abilities are getting to know one another. Enter young Sonia, who hasn’t told the others about herself. Will they accept her? As the title suggest, it’s okay to ask. Tickets at www.thecoterie.org.
DOCTOR MOLOCH
Jan. 29 – Feb. 16 | Unicorn Theatre
An AI robot needs to learn how to feel human emotions. How better to teach him/her/it than an actress? With a $10,000,000 contract riding on her efforts, there’s a lot at stake in this sci-fi fantasy. Tickets at www.unicorntheatre.org.
BROADWAY UP CLOSE
Jan. 31 – Feb. 23 | Quality Hill Playhouse
To commemorate its 30th anniversary, QHP shines a spotlight on shows that have come to Broadway since Kent Barnhart and company took over the venue (it’s actually a few years older — Theater League built and opened the space in 1989). Look forward to contemporary musical selections from Titanic, Come From Away, Mamma Mia!, Wicked and more. Tickets at www.qualityhillplayhouse.com.
RUMORS
Feb. 5 – April 13 | New Theatre Restaurant
When the posh guests arrive for a 10th-anniversary party, something is terribly wrong! The servants are absent, dinner hasn’t been cooked, the wife is missing and the husband appears to have been severely wounded. Comedy unfolds as the unsuspecting guests try to figure out who the suspect is in this late-career farce by comedy mastermind Neil Simon. Tickets at www.newtheatre.com.
ELLA & LOUIS
Feb. 6 – 9 | Music Theater Heritage at Crown Center
MTH’s intimate Ruby Room plays host to this celebration of the music of two of our greatest American performers and larger-than-life personalities: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Tickets at www.musictheaterheritage.com.
BROKE-OLOGY
Feb. 11 – March 2 | Copaken Stage
KC Rep reprises award-winning playwright Nathan Louis Jackson’s poignant remembrance of his family’s struggles and hardships, growing up in working-class Kansas City, Kansas. Family ties and the power of hope are stretched to the breaking point in this beautifully written paean to the triumph of love in hard times. Tickets at www.kcrep.org.
LITTLE WOMEN
Feb. 13 – March 7 | Music Theater Heritage at Crown Center
Based on Louisa May Alcott’s coming of age novel about the four March sisters — Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy — and their passage from childhood to womanhood during the tumultuous years of the Civil War, this captivating story is brought to music theater life on the MTH mainstage. Tickets at www.musictheaterheritage.com.
FENCES
Feb. 13 – 22 | Just Off Broadway Theatre
KC Melting Pot Theatre presents August Wilson’s Tony® Award winning Best Play, part of his celebrated chronicle of the African American experience set in Wilson’s hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Set in the
1950s, the play chronicles the life and times of a working-class father whose long-ago dreams of playing baseball in the Major Leagues — thwarted by that institution’s color barrier — create a bitter barrier between his son and him. Tickets at www.kcmeltingpot.com.
BEETLEJUICE
Feb. 18 – 23 | Music Hall
The wacky horror movie gets a crowd-pleasing musical comedy send-up in this Broadway hit featuring a score by Aussie comedian Eddie Perfect. Under its uproarious surface (six feet under, to be exact), it’s a remarkably touching show about family, love and making the most of every Day-O! Just don’t say the title twice! Tickets at www.kansascity.broadway.com.
Compiled by Mark Edelman
