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"It was, all in all, a thing of beauty. The inaugural production from Kansas City Actors Theatre…on opening night delivered what the founders had promised: A unique play impeccably performed." Robert Trussell, Kansas City Star |
"…from word one this show swings." Alan Scherstuhl, Pitch Weekly |
Photography by Nick Vedros and Associates |
Excerpted from Robert Trussel's review in the Kansas City Star
"It was, all in all, a thing of beauty." "The inaugural production from Kansas City Actors Theatre…on opening night delivered what the founders had promised: A unique play impeccably performed." "…These gifted actors are so well cast that they give the odd, often absurd world of this play a lived-in feel…" "There are no bad performances in this show, but two deserve special mention. Jones, who plays Billy as a lost soul yearning to define himself by the parents he never knew, is singularly affecting. It’s a piece of work that can fairly be called haunting." "Holcombe, the old song-and-dance man, has rarely been better as Johnnypateenmike. This is a performance for the books. …His scenes with Warfel are little masterpieces of comic timing." |
| Excerpted from Alan Scherstuhl's review in Pitch Weekly
"… the Kansas City Actors Theatre is tearing into its scrappy first (production), making good on its promise to showcase local talent in important work…from word one this show swings. And stings." "…As Billy's aunties, Elizabeth Robbins and Peggy Friesen open the show with a knockout scene of lived-in squabble that's just music away from being a duet…A seaside discussion between Billy (a movingly tangled David Jones) and Mark Robbins' salty Babbybobby had me laughing steadily for no less than five minutes." "…we're lucky to have…this new company." |
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Kansas City, MO--- Kansas City Actors’ Theatre will preview their first production of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan on June 3 and open June 10, 2005 at Union Station’s H&R Block City Stage Theatre.
In the great tradition of Irish story telling, Martin McDonagh tells of the people of Inishmaan, a remote island off the shore of Ireland, who learn that the renowned Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to a neighboring island to film his documentary Man of Aran. This bit of news turns the community upside down with rumor, longing and lies. However, no one is more passionate and determined about being in the movies than Cripple Billy, a boy whose chief occupation to this point in his life has been gazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him.
In this bleak yet uproariously funny play, the young Anglo-Irish dramatist Martin McDonagh fulfills the promise of his award-winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane while confirming his place in a tradition that extends from Synge to O'Casey and Brenden Behan.
The Cripple of Inishmaan will be the inaugural production of the Kansas City Actors Theatre, a new professional theatre company, and will be directed by Joe Price.
Director Joe Price has recently directed The Circus Show, a new original work for UMKC Theatre, The Shape of Things, Blue/Orange and Bright Ideas for the Unicorn Theatre. He works as an actor, director and fight choreographer throughout the county. Price is an associate professor at UMKC, where he teaches acting, directing and stage combat, and serves as the director of undergraduate theatre for the department. He is a founding member of A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago and the Oasis Theatre Company in Buffalo, where he has served as associate artistic director. In addition to acting and directing with Oasis Theatre and A Red Orchid Theatre, he has acted with Hillside Repertory, Minnesota Repertory, The Dallas Shakespeare Festival, the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival, and the Kansas City Rep (formerly the Missouri Rep).
Cast includes several prominent professional Kansas City actors as well as some UMKC grad students and include; Gary Holcombe, Mark Robbins, Betsy Robbins, Kathleen Warfel, Peggy Friesen, Stuart Rider, Amy Lewis, David Jones and Giorgio Litt.
"[Martin McDonagh is}...destined to be one of the theatrical luminaries of the twenty-first century." --- Robert Brustein, The New Republic
"[McDonagh is} exuberantly nervy and talented..... {He} could be ...the most original, seriously pertinent Irish playwright in years." ---Vincent Canby, The New York Times
This Artist-led, artist driven ensemble is made up of Kansas City theatre professionals that build, sustain and nurtures Kansas City theatre audiences by producing classic and modern-classic plays in true rotating repertory. The new home of KCAT will be at Union Station’s H&R Block City Stage Theatre.
