For complete Theatre listings through 2011, click here to visit the KC Events calendar.

  
Chestnut Fine Arts Center 
Sentimental Journey
Runs November 4 through December 12
For tickets call 913-764-2121 or online at www.chestnutfinearts.com
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Sentimental Journey opens Nov. 4 at the Chestnut Fine Arts Center in Olathe, Kan.  This show is the perfect recipe of musical hits from an era gone by, but not forgotten. Sentimental Journey is a salute to the 1940's and your favorite holiday music!  Memories will flow with songs like Puttin’ on the Ritz, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, Mack the Knife, White Christmas, Chatanooga Choo Choo and more.

Sentimental Journey stars Jon Daugharthy, Colleen Grate, Natalie Weaver and Licia Watson. This show is directed by Brad Zimmerman and choreographed by Annie Paglusch. This performance is rated “G”.

American Heartland Theatre
Plaid Tidings
Runs  November 5 through December 25
For tickets call  816-842-9999 or online at www.ahtkc.com
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Dreaming of a Plaid Christmas? Great! Because the hilarious, harmonious quartet, The Plaids (Frankie, Sparky, Jinx and Smudge) are back with a swingin' holiday spectacular. After their sudden demise, the four young men return to Earth-under the order of a heavenly phone call from Rosemary Clooney-this time performing a touching, nostalgic holiday spectacle blending mirth, music and a bit of "The Ed Sullivan Show."  This sequel to the record-breaking "Forever Plaid," mixes favorites from the holidays and sought-after tunes from the 1950s.

 
Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre
Awake and Sing
Runs November 16 through December 5 at MET Space
For tickets call 816-569-3226 or online at www.metkc.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

The MET presents “Awake and Sing,” a captivating and powerful American Masterwork by Clifford Odets.  Dreams and disappointments meet in this turbulent comedy-drama of a Jewish family struggling to stay afloat in the 1930s.  Generational conflicts arise as they strive for the American Dream.  Directed by Karen Paisley with Jeanne Averill, Robby Gibby Brand, and Richard Alan Nichols

Click here for the KCM review.

Kansas City Repertory Theatre
A Christmas Carol
Runs November 19 through December 26
For tickets call 816-235-2700 or online at www.kcrep.org/
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Kansas City's favorite holiday tradition is back, and we are celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the original production! Refreshed and refurbished the Rep's A Christmas Carol will have all your favorite iconic moments paired with some thrilling new surprises! Don't miss what is sure to be the most talked about show of the holiday season! Recommended for all ages.

 
Quality Hill Playhouse
Christmas in Song
Runs November 19 through December 26
For tickets call 816-421-1700 or online at  www.qualityhillplayhouse.com
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Join us for holiday cheer at "Kansas City's most consistently stirring Christmas show for 15 years" (The Pitch). The wonderful blend of sacred and secular, popular and traditional music has made this a sell-out, “must-see” event. This year's production will feature rousing piano music, soul-filled gospel, traditional carols and contemporary favorites that are sure to touch your heart and lift your spirit. Christmas in Song features Karen Errington, Lateesha McDonald Jackson, Cary Mock and pianist/emcee J. Kent Barnhart.

Click here for the KCM review.

Unicorn Theatre and UMKC Theatre
Distracted
Runs November 27 through December 12
For tickets call 816-531-7529 x10 or online at www.unicorntheatre.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Are we so tuned in to our info-rich world that we’ve tuned out the things that really matter? Jesse is eight and easily distracted, but so are his parents, neighbors—even the doctors. Is Jesse’s Attention Deficit Disorder caused by over-stimulation, bad parenting, chemicals in food, or is he just a kid in an ADD world? It’s a fast-paced, comic look at parenting in the Internet Age.

Musical Theater Heritage
A Spectacular Christmas
Runs December 2 through December 19, at Off Center Theatre, Crown Center
For tickets, call 816-842-9999 or online at www.mthkc.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Now in its third year, “A Spectacular Christmas” is a show with your favorite holiday songs. This year it features some incredible vocal talent including 'American Tenor' Nathan Granner, Lauren Braton, and Sarah Kleeman. It's funny, heartfelt, sentimental, and it's Christmastime. 

This is an original show written by MTH that has a lot of fun with our best-loved local performers. Starring Nathan Granner, Sarah Kleeman, Lauren Braton, Jeremy Watson, Tom Lancaster, George Harter, Chad Gerlt, and Malena Marcase.

One Night Only
Westport Center for the Arts
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
December 4, 7:30 p.m., at Westport Presbyterian Church
For tickets, call 816-931-1032 or online at www.westportcenterforthearts.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

The tradition of live readings began for WCA with the annual reading of The Christmas Carol and we will honor and keep it in our hearts once again. Part of the magic of being read to is the freedom to close your eyes and conjure the images from your own imagination. Come and hear the story you know and love in the beauty of the sanctuary of Westport Presbyterian Church. Free Refreshments after the performance!

 
One Night Only
The Lied Center of Kansas
Legally Blonde, The Musical
Based on the popular film
Tuesday, December 7, 2010, 7:30 p.m.
For tickets, call 785-864-2787 or online at www.lied.ku.edu
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Legally Blonde, The Musical is a giddy adaptation of the popular film, bursting with fun and charisma. When sorority girl Elle Woods is dumped by her boyfriend for someone more serious, she picks up the books and enrolls in Harvard Law School. With the help of her chihuahua sidekick Bruiser, a Greek chorus of sorority sisters and a teaching assistant named Emmett, Elle proves that being true to yourself never goes out of style.


Unicorn Theatre
A Very Joan Crawford Christmas
Runs December 8 through December 26
For tickets call 816-531-7529 x10 or online at www.unicorntheatre.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Kansas City’s own Joan Crawford returns for a holiday visit along with her loyal housekeeper, Mamacita. Settle in, listen up and learn: How to keep the sensitive male ego happy (“avoid moisturizer, it just smears all over your husband’s pajamas”). Host a dinner party with taste and texture (“put a hairdresser next to a professor of physics”). How to drink Pepsi with Vodka (“you’ll learn to love it, dammit”). And be sure to visit the craft room to decorate a wire hanger for the tree, but clean up that mess! Give Joan the respect she’s entitled to!

For complete Theatre listings through 2011, click here to visit the KC Events calendar.

By Victor Wishna

Senior Editor, Theatre; Theatre and Features Contributor
Victor Wishna is a writer, editor, and author, among other things. A graduate of Stanford University and the New School's creative writing MFA program, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, Humanities, and other major magazines and newspapers. He contributes a weekly real estate feature to the New York Post and his column “Letter from New York” is syndicated nationally.

With photographer Ken Collins, he published In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights (Umbrage Editions, 2006), for which he conducted and edited interviews with 61 prominent stage writers including Edward Albee, August Wilson, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein, and many others. The book won a 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal (www.intheircompany.com).

He has always maintained a love for theatre, as a writer, an audience member, and even an actor, appearing in several community and semi-professional productions. As an undergraduate, he studied acting and playwriting with Anna Deavere Smith, in addition to journalism and psychology (and not engineering or medicine).

After nearly 12 years in New York City, Victor recently returned to his hometown with his wife, Annie, also a K.C. native. When not writing for publication or pleasure, Victor is honing his stand-up routine, which he has performed at numerous clubs and special events around New York, the Midwest, and elsewhere. In June 2010, he was named New York’s second-funniest amateur Jewish comedian by The Jewish Week. Seriously.