Stage Capsule Reviews

Fifteen Minute Window Clocking in at about 20 minutes, Fifteen Minute Window is the perfect vehicle for those who find one-act plays too time-consuming. This collaboration between the UMKC Theatre Department and the downtown revivalists known as Urban Culture Project is a thought-provoking trip through the current political zeitgeist. Sequentially revealed behind two windows of the Jenkins Music Building are still-sickening images of 9/11, a woman in a black burqa detailing life as a Kansas City Muslim to the strains of a Moby cut, and a pair of almost naked go-go boys whose banners (one reads “Republican,” the other “Democrat”) appeal to something hormonally nonpartisan. Oct. 29 between 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. at the Jenkins Music Building, 1217 Walnut.

The House of Yes The 1997 film version of Wendy MacLeod’s darkly comic play The House of Yes found indie queen Parker Posey memorably dressed as Jackie Kennedy on the day of JFK’s assassination. The character is but one piece of MacLeod’s dysfunctional puzzle, which is set in a suburban Virginia home rocked by obsession, incest and a perfectly glazed Thanksgiving turkey. UMKC Theatre’s production is directed by Kara Armstrong, whose heady résumé includes a stint as assistant director at the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival and co-founder of the avant-garde theater troupe Princess Squid Productions. Oct. 28-31 at Grant Hall Theatre, 5228 Charlotte, 816-235-6222.

Mother Trucker Recalling a panoply of seemingly unrelated films — Kill Bill, Smokey and the Bandit and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore — Late Night Theatre’s new musical comedy about a female trucker and her wheelchair-bound son proves that the corniest of clichés can create a batch of tasty fritters. Writer-director David Wayne Reed’s show is both a parody of and homage to trailer-park pop culture. Among a talented cast that includes Late Night veterans Reed, Ron Megee and Gary Campbell, semiregular female company members Corrie Van Ausdal and Jessalyn Kincaid are the most fun. Through Oct. 30 at Late Night Theatre, 1531 Grand, 816-235-6222.

OOPS! Got milk? Neither does the children’s-theater branch of the Martin City Melodrama & Vaudeville Company, called Martin City Jr., which opens its second season with OOPS!, a world premiere musical by the troupe’s associate artistic director, Jon Copeland. Copeland and Martin City founder Jeanne Beechwood star in the piece, which follows the adventures of Princess Daisy (surely not the Judith Krantz character of the same name), whose travels from the planet Milky Dud to save the world from a milk shortage land her mistakenly on an Earth plagued, let’s hope, by the persnickety lactose-intolerant. Through Nov. 14 at Martin City Melodrama & Vaudeville Co., Metcalf South Shopping Center, 9635 Metcalf in Overland Park, 913-642-7576.

The Rocky Horror Show Minds Eye Theatre does the Time Warp yet again at Just Off Broadway with its return to Richard O’Brien’s gender-euphoric cult classic. Though this musical homage to cheesy 1950s horror movies has long since lost its power to shock — perhaps it’s so out it’s in — its thirty-year presence on the pop-culture radar has undoubtedly been inspirational. It would be surprising if any potential audience members were still among the uninitiated into squeaky-clean Brad and Janet’s foray into the sexually fluid world of Dr. Frank N. Furter and his glam posse, a group whose brazenness is now almost passe. Through Oct. 30 at Just Off Broadway, 3051 Central, 913-897-2348.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Pauline Flannery’s creative ideas in her adaptation of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson story are much more fun than her script, which is as stuffy as a Tory. With two actors (Walter Coppage and a contained yet maniacal Scott Cordes) playing the mad doctor and his chemically induced alter ego, the play becomes more a comment on human duality or substance abuse than a true homage to the novella. Thanks to Jason Harris’ eerie set design and David Kiehl’s darkly techno sound design, audiences are advised to ignore the stilted dialogue and feast instead in its sensory pleasures. Through Oct. 31 at the Coterie, 2450 Grand, 816-474-6552

The Tall Tale of Pecos Bill If the image of cowboys sitting around a campfire conjures up only the flatulence scene from Blazing Saddles, Theater for Young America offers a corrective with a slice of Western folklore dating back to those late-night poetry jams. Directed by Val Mackey, the show features Paul Orwick as the titular legend, whose résumé includes throwing a lasso around the Big Dipper and creating the Mojave Desert by regurgitating a heap of quicksand. In a salute to that ancient theatrical genre in which cowboys appeared in vaudeville shows, the production also features original compositions by Kansas City’s Cheryl Benge. Through Nov. 19 at Theater for Young America, 5909 Johnson Dr. in Mission, 913-831-2131.

Topdog/Underdog Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks deservedly won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for this biting and moving play that defines America on her terms. Its only characters are two African-American brothers named Booth and Lincoln who, despite cruel childhoods and social debits, manage to have an appetite for the better life they’re owed. Sharply directed by Mark Robbins, the play is so filled with pain that you want to look away. That tactic would only obscure the powerful performances of Cedric Hayman and Damron Russel Armstrong, actors who have traded in their own skin to bring these men to life. Through Nov. 7 at Unicorn Theatre, 3828 Main, 816-531-7529.