Kansas City to welcome back Broadway shows this fall, starting with ‘Hamilton’
The Kansas City Broadway Series will return with a splash after 18 months of a pandemic-induced vacuum. At least, that’s the plan.
The worldwide phenomenon “Hamilton” will open a nine-show 2021-22 season Sept. 28-Oct. 10 at the Music Hall, according to the just-released schedule. COVID-19 wiped out the series’ final two shows of 2019-20 and its entire 2020-21 season.
Of course, we’ve been down this road before, as the pandemic has repeatedly waylaid plans to reopen theaters. This time is different, according to Amy Hamm, executive director of the Kansas City-based American Theatre Guild, which collaborates with Broadway Across America on the KC Broadway Series.
“We’ve been scheduling and rescheduling shows since mid-March,” she said. “I just think the whole industry feels really solid that this timeline is going to hold. We feel like this is going to stick.”
Hamm and others are confident the pandemic will have abated by September once most of the nation is vaccinated.
What better way to celebrate the return of theater than with the return of “Hamilton,” which sold out for three weeks at the 2,400-seat Music Hall during the summer of 2019?
“We feel really fortunate to have that date and be able to open with that big of a show and that meaningful a show,” Hamm said.
“Hamilton” will have a two-week run on this visit. Among the other 2021-22 offerings, “Wicked” will run for three weeks (Jan. 5-23) and the rest for a week or less.
“Wicked,” “Tootsie,” “Mean Girls,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Ain’t Too Proud” and “Fiddler on the Roof” are holdovers from the canceled seasons. “Stomp” and “An Officer and a Gentleman” round out the schedule.
Like “Tootsie” and “Mean Girls,” “An Officer and a Gentleman” is a musical adaptation of a non-musical movie. It also is the rare Broadway touring show that hasn’t run on Broadway. In fact, it will make its U.S. premiere with this tour, having had a run in England in 2018.
Hamm said the series plans to try to bring in “The Cher Show” and “The Band’s Visit,” both of which had been on the 2020-21 schedule, during future seasons.
Season-ticket subscriptions go on sale immediately. After those orders are processed, individual tickets for “Hamilton” and the other shows will be available. Season tickets start at $241 for six shows (“Tootsie,” “Mean Girls,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “Ain’t Too Proud”). Tickets to “Hamilton” and “Wicked” can be purchased as extras to the season. “Stomp” can be swapped for another show or purchased as an extra. Contact broadwayinkc.com or 816-421-7500.
Hamm hopes the long theater drought will help spark a big demand for tickets, but nobody can predict the pandemic’s lingering effects.
“I think everybody is a little uncertain of what to expect,” she said. “But I certainly feel like there’s a big desire out there for live events and for the arts. That’s certainly what we’re hoping, that people are ready to get out of their house and experience live theater again.”
2021-22 Broadway Series
“Hamilton”
Sept. 28-Oct. 10 at Music Hall
The musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda took Broadway by storm in 2015, winning 11 Tony Awards from its record 16 nominations as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama. It tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, the youngest of the Founding Fathers, using hip-hop, jazz, R&B and ballads. Hamilton was Gen. George Washington’s right-hand man at the age of 22 and became our nation’s first treasury secretary at 34.
“Tootsie”
Nov. 23-28 at Music Hall
The 1982 movie comedy starring Dustin Hoffman as out-of-work actor/soap opera star Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels was turned into a musical comedy that opened on Broadway in 2019 and ran a little over eight months. It earned 11 Tony Award nominations, winning two, including best book of a musical by Robert Horn. David Yazbek wrote the music and lyrics.
“Wicked”
Jan. 5-23, 2022, at Music Hall
One of the five longest-running shows in Broadway history, “Wicked” opened in 2003, and continued to fill Broadway’s largest venue, the Gershwin Theatre, before the pandemic. It also has been hugely popular in Kansas City during four previous appearances. “Wicked” tells the story of two girls who meet in the land of Oz, long before Dorothy ever arrived, and how they grow to become the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch.
“Stomp”
Feb. 11-12, 2022, at Kauffman Center
Unique among the Broadway Series offerings, “Stomp” is a show not a play. In fact, it contains no dialogue and has no plot, although it does take the audience on a journey. An eight-member troupe uses everything but conventional percussion instruments — from matchboxes and brooms to garbage cans and hubcaps — to fill the stage with rhythms. “Stomp,” created in England in 1991, has been playing off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre since 1994, with several touring stops in Kansas City over the years.
“Mean Girls”
March 15-20, 2022, at Music Hall
Tina Fey of “Saturday Night Live” and “30 Rock” fame wrote the 2004 “Mean Girls” movie as well as the book for the stage musical about a new girl adapting to the cutthroat world of teen girls at a suburban Illinois high school. The Broadway show “Mean Girls” was nominated for 12 Tony Awards in 2018 but didn’t win any. It closed March 11, 2020 — the day before Broadway went dark because of the pandemic — after 805 performances. A film adaptation of the musical is in the works.
“Jesus Christ Superstar”
March 29-April 3, 2022, at Kauffman Center
One year late because of COVID-19, a new production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” will tour North America in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the rock opera with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice. The iconic musical, which opened on Broadway in 1971 and had revivals in 1977, 2000 and 2012, depicts the final weeks in the life of Jesus Christ as seen through the eyes of Judas. The familiar score includes “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” “Heaven on Their Minds” and “Superstar.”
“An Officer and a Gentleman”
April 12-17, 2022, at Kauffman Center
Based on the 1982 film starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger about a Navy pilot in training and a local factory girl, the touring stage musical “An Officer and a Gentleman” is a new adaptation by three-time Tony Award nominee Dick Scanlan (“Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Everyday Rapture”). The score features 1980s hits, including the Grammy- and Oscar-winning “Up Where We Belong” from the movie.
“Fiddler on the Roof”
May 3-8, 2022, at Music Hall
One of Broadway’s most popular musicals of all time, “Fiddler on the Roof” returned to the Great White Way in 2015, 50 years after it won nine Tony Awards. With familiar hits such as “Tradition,” “Sunrise, Sunset” and “If I Were a Rich Man,” it tells the story of a Jewish family in Russia in the early 1900s. National tours of “Fiddler” stopped in 2008 at Starlight and in 2012 at Yardley Hall.
“Ain’t Too Proud”
June 21-26, 2022, at Music Hall
The Temptations’ journey from the streets of Detroit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame comes alive in “Ain’t Too Proud,” which set box-office records in 2019. With hits such as “My Girl,” “Just My Imagination,” “Get Ready” and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” the musical follows the group’s personal and political conflicts that threatened to tear them apart during America’s decade of civil unrest.
This story was originally published February 4, 2021 at 8:59 AM.
