It’s easy to imagine the three Haim sisters as adolescents, learning how to shred guitar in their parents’ rock cover band and practicing their moves in front of a mirror. Easy because that’s very much how the siblings present on stage today: Este, the oldest, punctuating every dramatic bass line she struck with a matching face; Danielle, middle child and…
It’s the day before Easter, and the crowd at StoneGate Motorplaza near Stilwell is in a celebratory mood. Hundreds have parked along 207th Street and in a nearby field to gawk at all the eye candy: a Shelby Cobra, a gull-winged McLaren, a British Noble. Inside the gate, people cluster around for a peek under the hoods of these and other…
Director Lynne Ramsay locks us in terrifying solitary confinement with PTSD-addled vet Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) in the lean, violent stunner You Were Never Really Here. It’s been six years since Ramsay’s divisive bad-kid nightmare We Need to Talk About Kevin, and the writer-director is still embracing the dark side. She won Best Screenplay at last year’s Cannes and Phoenix took home the…
Every time there’s a Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, Newtown or Parkland, Pulse, drive-by or Las Vegas, we Americans fall into grief, anger, angst, dismay. Or, perhaps, defiance. In his new play, Brother Toad, part of Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s OriginKC: New Works Festival, Nathan Louis Jackson addresses how we think about guns — “Americans love guns more than apple pie” —…
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring. I do, don’t you? ‘Course you do. Apologies to Tom Lehrer for lifting his lyrics, but it’s warm and it’s sunny, and there’s a stack of new music videos for you to watch as you sit on the porch after work and drink something cool and refreshing. Maybe run…
Though the objective of this month’s first annual Workers Revival Fest is to improve labor conditions here in the Kansas City area, the inspiration behind it was 5,000 miles away, in Uruguay. Last year, Missouri Jobs with Justice organizer Natalie Patrick-Knox attended a labor conference in the country and was taken aback by its vibrant atmosphere. The venue wasn’t a…
Monday, May 7The KC area’s only true Jewish deli, Broadway Deli (2101 Broadway) officially opens its doors today in the Crossroads. Breakfast will be available from 7 to 9:30 a.m., Monday through Friday, and until 3 p.m. on Saturdays. Breakfast offerings include challah French toast, bagels and lox, and matzo brei. Get in on some serious sandwiches the rest of…
“Dear Secretary DeVos.”So begins a five-page letter addressed to the U.S. Education Secretary, signed by Andrew K. Smith, a partner in the Independence law firm Humphrey Farrington & McClain.The letter and an accompanying legal petition tell the stories of 181 clients who were scammed by the now-closed Wright Career College. We heard versions of the same stories last year in…
As part of KC Repertory Theatre’s OriginKC: New Works Festival, UMKC Theatre presents a workshop production of Letters From Freedom Summer, directed by Ricardo Khan (a co-writer with Sibusiso Mambo and Denise Nicholas). Khan’s previous productions at UMKC Theatre include Kansas City Swing, about baseball, jazz and racial integration in 1940s KC, and Freedom Rider (a collaboration with playwrights Nathan Louis Jackson, Kathleen McGhee-Anderson,…
It’s easy to write off the idea of a “night nurse” as a millennial-age luxury for well-to-do parents who don’t want to spend the time it takes to properly raise a newborn child. But after seeing Tully, I have a newfound respect and empathy for any woman trying to navigate the screaming hellscape of motherhood while retaining her sanity. If…
For pretty understandable reasons, most shelters won’t accept used underwear as a donated item. You can buy new underwear and donate it, but not a lot of people do that. As a result, women’s underwear is one of the under-donated items of clothing there is. In 2013, Hayley Besheer Santell founded MADI Apparel, a line of eco-friendly underwear, sleepwear, robes,…
The future is female? For the motorcycle industry, it would certainly appear that way. Twenty years ago, women accounted for 8 percent of bike sales. Today, that number is up around 14 percent — and growing. Last year, about 60 local lady riders met up at Blip Roasters in the West Bottoms for Kansas City’s first official citywide International Female Ride…
Yesterday, a Missouri House committee investigating Eric “The Nasty Weasel” Greitens revealed that Greitens has been trying to hide his donors’ identities since the earliest days of his campaign for Missouri governor. That nugget of information came from the testimony of Michael Hafner, a former Greitens campaign staffer. Greitens is currently being investigated on several fronts, ranging from the felony theft…
Way down in Mississippi, goes the song, waaaaayyy down, as though that state is far removed from any civilized society. As sung at the start of the play Down in Mississippi, a co-production of Kokopelli Theatre, the Living Room Theatre, and the William Inge Foundation, the gospel tune sets a mood. That being: in 1964, Mississippi is indeed a terrifying…
