Here are excerpts of what our critics thought of current theater productions.
Kansas City Repertory Theatre s Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, through March 18 at the UMKC Performing Arts Center. Director David Goldstein and his designers have assembled a sharp-looking production .
. . and the casting is on the money.
Mark Robbins is the ideal choice to play Holmes . . .
(but) this play doesn t really build and tends to run out of steam in the second act. A plot full of logistics about trains and boats and shortcuts inevitably bumps against the limits of what can be shown on stage.
Kansas City Repertory Theatre s Love, Janis, through April 1 at Copaken Stage, 13th and Walnut.
The show is an effective piece of theater that draws most of its power from the raucous music recorded by Janis Joplin during her blazing four-year career. This is a good-faith effort to capture the vulnerable human being dwelling behind the Southern Comfort-chugging public persona.
The New Theatre s I Do!
I Do! through April 15. Viewers could easily digest this mid-1960s essay on long-term love and commitment as agreeably light entertainment.
But there s much more to this shrewdly structured show from Tom Jones (book and lyrics) and Harvey Schmidt (score). The work emerges as an often amusing, even acerbic, commentary on the ups and downs of marriage.
Martin City Melodrama Vaudeville Company s Pirates of the Jelly Be-an!
through April 15 at Metcalf South Shopping Center. (Eric) Ellison, as it turns out, is a real find. His Long John is a riot (not to mention his singing lobster).
Often at Martin City, (founder Jeanne) Beechwood performs with a level of crazed energy and an eye for the absurd that her actors never quite match. Ellison is the exception.
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