Unicorn premiere a work in progress, TYA entertains toddlers

BY: Russ Simmons, Theater Reviewer

Righttnextto me

When it comes to original, world premiere musicals, the Kansas City area is experiencing an embarrassment of riches. The Coterie is currently offering Harry Connick Jr.'s “The Happy Elf,” and the American Heartland Theatre is featuring “Another Night Before Christmas” by Sean Grennan and Leah Okimoto.

Now, the Unicorn presents “rightnextto me,” an ambitious and complex pop opera about love, loneliness and letting go. With book, music and lyrics by Gregg Coffin (“Convenience”), it is an interesting, if thorny theatrical experiment.

Two actors, Teri Adams and Jerry Jay Cranford, play three different couples: an Army captain serving in Iraq and his worried wife back home; a flight attendant fleeing an unhappy relationship with her husband, a know-it-all marriage counselor; and a mailman and a newly separated mom who meet during a frigid Kansas City snowstorm.

The playwright and the company have been “workshopping” the show for months, searching for musical cues to link these stories thematically. During the opening night performance, Director Cynthia Levin admitted that they were still changing things and adding songs, welcoming the audience into the heart of the creative process.

It shouldn't be too surprising, therefore, that the show feels unfinished. One problem is that, in the first act, the characters barely interact. In fact, the first face-to-face encounter doesn't occur until act two. In the scene that works best, a couple meet and sing a lovely song where they admit, “Though the winter wind blows and nips at your nose, it's beginning to feel warm.”

There seem to be loose ends yet to be tied up in linking the stories. But Levin and the artistic and technical crew at the Unicorn deserve a lot of credit for staging the scenes in inventive and visually interesting ways. Adams and Cranford prove to be vocal iron men, ably executing this song-filled marathon.

“rightnextto me” runs through Dec. 30 at The Unicorn Theatre, 3828 Main St., Kansas City, Mo. For information, call (816) 531-PLAY.

HANSEL AND GRETEL

While based on a tale by the Brothers Grimm, the Theatre for Young America production of “Hansel and Gretel” has eliminated some of the story's grim elements. As a result, TYA's musical fantasy is a palatable diversion for toddlers.

Their version is a 50-minute adaptation of the famous opera by Engelbert Humperdink – the 19th century German composer, not the 1960s pop star. This truncated adaptation moves quickly enough to make it an appropriate introduction to opera for the rug rat set.

Heather Price plays the spunky Hansel and Amity Bryson takes on the role of the more reserved Gretel. Sent to gather berries, they become lost in the German forest. While their fearful father (Chris Gleeson) searches for them, the duo is looked after by guardian angels.

But, of course, evil lurks in the wooded darkness. Hansel and Gretel discover a gingerbread house and begin to eat the shingles. A cannibalistic witch (Rachael Redler) cries out, “Nibbling, nibbling, little mouse! Who's nibbling on my little house?”

Humperdink's score is his most familiar and most accessible. The vocal presentations here range from the very good to the merely adequate, but this probably won't matter much to most youngsters. Director Gene Mackey keeps the action moving at a brisk pace and Danielle Laubach has provided a set that looks good enough to eat.

“Hansel and Gretel” runs through Dec. 29 at the H&R Block City Stage at Union Station, 30 Pershing Road, Kansas City, Mo. For information, call 831-2131.