Stage Capsule Reviews

Blink Twice for Her The buddies who formed the Borogrove Theatre Company keep on keeping on with their love-of-the-art-fueled ways. Now they’re moving on up to a fancy-pants berth at Union Station, which hosts an awful lot of inspired art for a so-called boondoggle. As is its mandate, Borogrove is premiering a new play, Blink Twice for Her, a comedy by Paige McLemore, the moped-loving K-State grad who wrote The Art of Conquering Aja, itself an amusing Borogrove production last year. This one concerns what goes down between two women hanging in their ex-boyfriend’s apartment. Expect something about bus accidents and an engagement to a senator, which certainly sounds promising. Through Sept. 25 at Union Station’s City Stage, 30 W. Pershing, 816-460-2020.

Killer Joe Playwright Tracy Letts gave us Bug!, the grandly distressing epic of itchiness and paranoia that closed the Unicorn’s 2004 season. (The interim, one imagines, has been spent fumigating the place.) Now, here’s Killer Joe, Letts’ should-we-be-laughing-at-this trailer-park tragedy, brought to the Just Off Broadway stage by a one-off assortment of KC theater pros. We get Scott Cordes directing, Rusty Sneary and Late Night superstar Corrie Van Ausdal acting, and Gorilla Theatre guide Tyler Miller producing and performing (meaning he trods the boards and ponies up so said boards can hold him). Expect a dark play with real violence as well as a human center. Through Sept. 24 at Just Off Broadway Theatre, 3051 Central. Call 816-235-6222.

Moon Over Buffalo Perhaps unintentionally, there are layers to unpeel here. We have Ken Ludwig’s satiric farce about struggling, over-the-hill actors hoping to ascend from their Buffalo Rep to the heights of Broadway and Hollywood. When Frank Capra swings through, casting a film version of The Scarlet Pimpernel, they might get their chance. What I’ve always wondered is how the real actors in a community-theater production of this show feel about it all. If some L.A. shmoe offers one of them a ticket out, are the ticket buyers screwed? Assuming everyone’s staying here, expect all the rapid-fire mix-ups and door slams that farce generally promises. Also be ready for a patina of backstage sentimentality, nostalgia for the showbiz of yesteryear, to sweeten it up. Through Sept. 25 at Blue Springs Civic Center, 2000 Northwest Ashton Dr., 816-228-0137.

New York State of Mind I once got a little turned around in Manhattan — the one where you feel like you need to wash your face every three blocks, not Kansas’ threadbare college town — but righted myself after recalling Sinatra in his sailor suit: The Bronx is up, and the Battery’s down. So Quality Hill’s latest cabaret revue might be educational, offering valuable lessons about the city that never shuts up. Lesson one: Manhattan babies don’t sleep tight until the dawn. Lesson two: No Billy Joel song warrants placement alongside “Lullaby of Broadway.” Lesson three: Quality Hill’s torch songs and show tunes are usually strong enough to take KC or Manhattan, that dirty old town. Through Oct. 9 at Quality Hill Playhouse, 303 W. 10th Street, 816-421-1700.

The Odd Couple A friend once got freaked out when, stoned as hell, he tried to count how many McDonald’s restaurants he knew. Something similar is going down here: How many Neil Simon plays can one town host in a month? Why do his sitcommy pleasantries command three theaters at once while the best Shakespeare the scene can muster is the jokey Complete Works (Abridged) at the Leawood Stage Company? Still, there are laughs here, and director Shelly Stewart is both screamingly funny and responsible for the excellent Proof awhile back. Maybe it’s asking too much to expect something more daring in Olathe, the town that gave the world What Would Jesus Do? At Chestnut Arts Center, 234 N. Chesnut in Olathe. Call 913-764-2121.

Plaza Suite You know the drill: three couples, three acts, one expensive hotel room. Despite its huge success, Neil Simon’s one-man anthology is light on its feet, mostly thanks to the variety of tales offered. We’re ushered to the next vignette at just the moment we’re ready for something new — or newish, at least. The show is directed by Nino Casisi, whose treatment of Fiddler on the Roof this summer was pretty strong — even out here in goyland, I believed a man could kvetch. Through Sept. 18 at the Roger T. Sermon Center, 201 N. Dodgion in Independence, 816-325-7370. (Those craving dinner with the show should call 816-325-7367.)

Rose’s Dilemma Neil Simon’s latest, first produced in 2003 and enjoying its Kansas City premiere, concerns a successful author who, to preserve a swank Hamptons lifestyle, must pump out a masterpiece. Don’t mistake it for autobiography, though — the Rose of the title was reputedly inspired by playwright Lillian Hellman. (Hellman’s real-life husband, Dashiell Hammett, perhaps the greatest of all crime writers, is here as Walsh McLaren. That he’s a ghost, however, is cause for concern.) Here’s hoping that Mary Tyler Moore bailed out of the Broadway premiere during previews because of a facelift scheduling conflict, not because of the quality of the material. Through Oct. 23 at the American Heartland Theatre, 2450 Grand, Crown Center, 816-842-9999.

Story Theatre Here’s that hippy-era rarity: an experimental play invested in ancestral memory, Jungian archetypes and what the stories a culture tells itself tell us about that culture. It’s also perfectly lucid, even familiar, and — with its song, dance and pantomime — has often been mistaken for a kids’ show. But when it premiered more than 30 years ago, Paul Sills’ retelling of the fairy tales that gird most Western narrative seemed political, dealing as it does with deluded despots and abuses of fairy-land power. If the Barn Players are updating, let’s wish them luck in finding that Grimm obscurity about the king who napped and cleared brush while Titan dragged cities into the brine. Through Sept. 25 at the Barn Players, 6219 Martway in Mission, 913-432-9100.

Troop Train Treachery More event than show, it’s parts mystery, comedy, history lesson, parlor game, quiz show, and fourth-wall-smashing happening. Not to mention charming. You sit at your table, nosh on your bread and chat with actors done up for a 1943 train ride from Union Station. Soon, a corpse is found, a course arrives, and we’re instructed to assist in the investigation as we eat. Some audience members even get to perform meaty parts, sometimes stealing a scene from the funny Mary Gay Rogers and Toby Crawford. Glendora Davis spoons endless complications into her story, but she also adds dashes of local history (burlesque and spies!) and some near-trenchant observations about a woman’s role in yesterday’s world. Through Sept. 17 at Union Station Café, 30 West Pershing, 816-813-9654. (Reviewed in the August 4 issue)