KCMETROPOLIS.org
Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

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

American Heartland Theatre
Maybe, Baby, It’s You
Runs January 7 through February 20
For tickets call 816-842-9999 or online at www.ahtkc.com
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

The blockbuster comedy about the search for that most elusive of all entities...your soul mate. We take a raucous ride through male-female relationships with the two searchers with a laundry list of must-have qualities for a mate that swiftly dwindles down to "warm and breathing" as the only prerequisite; a mild mannered Midwesterner whose blind date turns out to be the Greek goddess Medea; a film noir couple who realize that their razor-sharp banter is hiding their fear and vulnerability; a gorgeous, charming brain surgeon who is always "Mr.Wrong" due to his penchant for spastic, arrhythmic club dancing; a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary who realize that marriage may not have ended their search for a soul mate; an elderly divorced couple who entertain the fantasy of a reconciliation at their grandson's soccer game; and other would-be and shouldn't be couples trying to find each other. Maybe Baby, It's You. Or maybe...it isn't. 

Quality Hill Playhouse
Blues in the Night: The Lyrics of Johnny Mercer
Runs January 14 through February 13
For tickets call 816-421-1700 or online at  www.qualityhillplayhouse.com
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

One of our most popular shows of all time is back! Johnny Mercer wrote more than fifteen hundred songs, making him one of the best-known American lyricists. Join our jazzy singers and combo as they sizzle again on numbers like "One for My Baby," "Autumn Leaves," "Skylark" and "Dream."

Click here to read KCM's review.

The Coterie Theatre
The Bridge to Terabithia
Runs January 18 through February 27
For tickets call 816-474-6552 or online at www.coterietheatre.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

This powerful production focuses the humor, warmth, and emotional intensity of Katherine Paterson's Newbery Award winning novel. Jesse, a budding artist who feels separate from his family and rural Virginia culture, dreams of becoming something special. Leslie, the new girl from the city and the ultimate outsider, opens up a world of imagination, art, and literature for him. Together they create Terabithia, a fantasy kingdom where they are safe from those who don't understand them. Their friendship grows as Jesse's world expands. When tragedy strikes, the strength gained in Terabithia lets Jesse move forward on his own, and lets him share the magic of his dreams.  

 Click here to read the KCM review

Unicorn Theatre
In The Next Room or the vibrator play
Runs January 29 through February 13
For tickets call 816-531-7529 x10 or online at www.unicorntheatre.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

In this Sarah Ruhl play set at the dawn of the age of electricity in a well-to-do 1880s Victorian home, proper gentleman and scientist Dr. Givings has innocently invented an extraordinary device for treating “hysteria” in women (and, occasionally, men): the vibrator. His young wife tends to their newborn daughter and wonders exactly what is going on in the next room. This 2010 Tony Nominee for Best Play is based on actual bizarre history.

Click here to read the KCM review.

Theatre Gym
Duty
Runs February 10 through February 13, at Off Center Theatre, Crown Center
For tickets call 816-842-9999 or online at www.crowncenter.com
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Duty deals with the obligation to country, family and self. David Crenshaw was wounded in Vietnam. He and his wife Ellie are both opposed to their son Adam entering the armed forces. Once Adam enlists, David starts a grass roots peace organization that is dedicated to making friends in the Muslim world. David's efforts prove newsworthy and life altering.

Peters Theatre @ William Jewell College
The Last Five Years
Runs February 11 through February 12
For tickets call 816-415-7590 or online at www.jewell.edu
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Jason Robert Brown’s award-winning musical The Last Five Years as part of William Jewell College’s senior theatre performance series. The unique story line takes the audience on a journey through the last five years of Jamie and Cathy’s relationship as they fall in and out of love. Jamie tells the story from the beginning to the end, while Cathy tells the story from the end to the beginning. Jamie, a young author, finds success early in life while Cathy, a young actress, struggles to find more than a nibble of success. Jamie and Cathy must choose to follow a dream, with or without each other. The off-Broadway show won Drama Desk awards for Best Musical and Best Lyrics in 2002.

Kansas City Actors Theatre
Oh What A Lovely War
Runs February 11 through February 27
For tickets call 816-235-6222 or online at www.kcactors.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

In a unique collaboration between the National WWI Museum, UMKC Theatre and the Kansas City Actors Theatre, we bring you one of the 20^th century’s theatrical masterpieces. A carnival of song, battle and heartbreak as the war to end all wars blazes its way on to the stage at America’s national museum dedicated to that war.

Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre
The Piano Lesson
Runs February 17 through March 6 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

August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is the 1930s entry to the playwright’s 20^th-century play cycle. A bitter family history, born in slavery, is carved into the wood of a piano. For Berniece, the piano is a shrine, a monument to her family’s painful past. For her brother, Boy Willie, it’s a new beginning

Kansas City Repertory Theatre
Circle Mirror Transformation
Runs February 18 through March 20
For tickets call 816-235-2700 or online at www.kcrep.org
Call or visit the website for performance days and times

Acclaimed as the debut of the year by one of the most exciting new writers in the country, Circle Mirror Transformation is a touching new comedy about the most unlikely of stories. Five citizens of a rural town begin a community acting class, each with his/her own expectations, but soon learn more about each other and themselves than they bargained for. Hailed as one of the most insightful and original new works of the year, the Rep is proud to present the Kansas City premiere of a play that explores the transforming powers of creativity.

One Night Only
Johnson County Community College
An Evening with Martin Short
February 12, 8 p.m., at Yardley Hall
For tickets call 913-469-4445 or online at www.jccc.edu/performing-arts-series

See one of America’s premier funny men in a hilarious one-man show. He’s a comedic chameleon with an uncanny lineup of hijinks, impressions and stunts. His talent spans from playing animated zany characters in feel-good flicks (Father of the Bride) to co-starring with Glenn Close (FX’s legal thriller Damages).

One Night Only
Musical Theater Heritage
Musical Monday
February 14, 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

The first of 2011’s six occasional “Musical Mondays”—an impromptu night of musical theatre in a nightclub setting, featuring a few headliners as well as other voices from KC’s pool of musical talent. (Look for more Musical Mondays on March 21, April 25, and again in the fall).

One Night Only
The Lied Center of Kansas
William Inge’s Bus Stop                                          
Saturday, February 19, 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

Presented by Montana Repertory Theatre: In this warm and affecting hit comedic drama, iconic playwright William Inge examines some of the many faces of love. Written in 1955 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and University of Kansas graduate, Bus Stop is about a group of strangers traveling by bus. Stranded in a rural Kansas diner during a freak snowstorm, the compelling narrative observes eight characters as they experience frustration, tears and laughter, examine their own motivations and forge unlikely romantic connections in a single night.

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.