Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City

Tuesday, August 21st

While that may have been true in the fictional world of Oklahoma, it is certainly not true today. The Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City is a beautiful building. It opened in 1936 and contains a 9,300 seat arena, the 2,400 seat Music Hall (where we played) and a smaller theatre. The building is emblazoned with a great inscription: "A Monument to the Public Spirit and Civic Ideals of the People". It's got some cool Art Deco architecture and a couple of beautiful murals in the lobby. It's coolness ends there. The stage of the Music Hall is on the 3rd floor of the building. The loading door is in the basement. Everything show related has to be brought up 4 floors in a freight elevator. The stage house was just large enough to accommodate our show, but the backstage areas were extremely tight. Half the dressing rooms are located on the so called "3 1/2 Floor". The elevator doesn't go there - everything for those rooms had to be carried up by hand. The building is owned by the city, there are layers upon layers of bureaucracy involved in the simplest things (like getting the doors unlocked or the freight elevator repaired when it breaks down). Everything about the physical building was a trial (to close the door to the Stage Management office, we had to rearrange the furniture each night - there wasn't room for our three desks).

Municipal Auditorium

The crew was terrible. They don't get a lot of broadway shows in Kansas City, so most of the employment for the local stage hands is at the convention center. (Our traveling guys refer to convention center stage hands as "carpet kickers" - they spend a lot of time unrolling carpet in convention halls.) The guys hired as the spot light operators were relating their experience behind spots in terms of hours (and it showed). Every night was opening night for most of the crew. They didn't remember what they did yesterday and had to be reminded about every cue. They never did learn the show and kept making stupid mistakes.

Wayne, our wardrobe supervisor, never even made it to load-in in Kansas City. He arrived at the hotel (after our very eventful travel day - see my previous post) feeling ill and went to the emergency room. He had some sort of crazy infection on his backside that kept him away from the theatre for most of the week. In a strange coincidence, Matt (one of our ensemble boys) also had an infection on his backside. Matt had a staph infection that kept him out of the show all week. Patrick (Lancelot) had flight delays coming from New York on Tuesday and missed the show, meaning that his understudy (Jonathan - who had never performed the role) was put on at the last minute on Tuesday. With our regular King Arthur (Michael) still away on vacation, this gave us a line-up that included 6 different covers performing on opening night in Kansas City.

The company pulled together and gave a great performance in Kansas City. (You can read the review here.) While the show went reasonably well, we had our share of backstage dramas and by the time the curtain rang down, we had all just about had it with the whole situation. Company Management to the rescue! While the presenters in KC were not throwing us an opening night party, Karl tacked a notice to the call board that the company would be picking up the tab at the hotel's bar until midnight. The entire company descended on the very surprised waitstaff back at the hotel and rang up an enormous tab. Karl (and Touralot's) gesture was a much appreciated release on the tension that had been building since we left St. Paul!

While in Kansas City, I hit a personal record number of roadfood joints - 4 (and one more that should be). I enjoyed the justifiably legendary barbecue at Arthur Bryant's, a Kansas City Strip at the Hereford House, and a hamburger and a malted at Winstead's. The two culinary highlights of KC were the barbecue I had inside a gas station and the fried chicken Piper and I drove 10 miles to get to between shows.


First, the barbecue in a gas station. Oklahoma Joe's sells a T-shirt which reads: "My favorite restaurant is in a gas station" and I seriously considered buying one. Erik and Ryan discovered this place quite by accident. They were out playing disc golf when Ryan decided he needed a bottle of water. They went to the Shamrock gas station on the corner. As soon as they were out of the car, they knew something was up: the air was perfumed with barbecue. Inside the convenience store, there was a line of people and a wall full of BBQ awards. They ate and they both told me about it. The next day, I met Erik there for lunch. There was a huge line of people from all walks of life (Grandmothers, Construction Workers, guys in suits) waiting at the counter. I ordered the pulled pork sandwich (Carolina-style: with spicy slaw on the sandwich) and a side of the smoked chicken gumbo. The sandwich was barbecue heaven (it made me forget all about Texas' weird barbecued beef ideas) and the gumbo was outrageous (it was 105 degrees in KC but I was happily eating hot gumbo).


Roadfood.com described the fried chicken at Stroud's thusly: "Stroud's makes the most delicious fried chicken in America. " Now, if Michael Stern, who I trust eminently in matters of the greasy pallet, says something is the most delicious in America, I have to try it. Between shows on Saturday, Piper and I drove out to Stroud's a picked up more than $200 worth of fried chicken and sides (we had interested a total of 14 people in chicken from Stroud's - you didn't think it was all for us, did you?). Stroud's is a KC institution. Their current location is north of the city on a piece of property known as Oak Ridge Manor. The restaurant is housed in a building that dates back to 1829. It sits on a pond and has its own chapel. My great regret is that we didn't get to eat there. (When we arrived to pick up our booty, there was a wait of more than an hour for a table - we didn't have that kind of time!) Everyone's meal came with choice of potato (everyone chose their fluffy mashed), green beans (there was almost as much pork in each dish as there were beans), salad or soup (I got the homemade chicken noodle - delicious), gravy (yum!) and two cinnamon rolls. The cinnamon rolls were the surprising perfect accompaniment to the meal. Not a Cinnabon type of gooey mess, these were buttery dinner rolls with a thick crust of cinnamon on top. They were the hit of the meal. Oh yeah, the chicken was tasty too! We all ate happily together on the second floor of the theatre and shared stories of just how bad the local crew was!


I did fit in some sight-seeing between my gastronomic pursuits. On Thursday, I visited the Steamboat Arabia Museum. The Steamboat Arabia sank in the Missouri River about 10 miles from Kansas City in 1856. In 1988, the wreck was uncovered in a cornfield hundreds of yards from the current course of the river. When the wreck was uncovered, much of the more than 200 tons of cargo on the vessel was found to be perfectly preserved! The mud and water at the bottom of the river had kept air from spoiling the ship's contents. When it was all recovered, the find marked the single largest collection of pre-Civil War artifacts in the world! Much of it is displayed in the museum: buttons, tools, guns, shoes, hats and even jars of pickles and perfume. The guys who excavated the wreck ate some of the pickles they found and drank some of the champagne, it was still good! It was a really interesting window into the past.

Steamboat historical fun-fact: The paddles on a steamboat's paddle wheel were not all the same size. The paddles were smaller on either end of the piston's stroke (where there is less power) and larger in the middle of the stroke.


I also visited KC's Union Station. When it opened in 1914, KC's Union Station was the third largest railroad station in the country. Kansas City was a major transportation hub then and the train was the way to travel. Today, Union Station has only a handful of regularly scheduled Amtrak trains, but still leads the nation in terms of freight tonnage that passes through town. The station has been given a second life. It contains a children's science museum, restaurants, a post office, theaters and a planetarium. I visited the science museum as it had an exhibit on the railroads and Kansas City. The building was busy on the day that I visited and I was glad that this grand old piece of history had found a new life.


On Friday, a local Kansas City radio station held their annual Elvis Parade. Last week marked the 30th anniversary of the King's death, and the good people of Kansas City came out to pay tribute in this tacky tribute. I only caught the very end of the parade, but Fran took these photos:

These photos pose the (to me) eternal question: Why does everybody want to be the 1970's, jelly donut, sweaty, slightly rediculous, come-back Elvis? Why not the 1950's, slim, sexy, rebel Elvis? Thanks, Fran, for sharing the photos!

I was surprised by how big Kansas City is. The region is home to almost 2 million people. It is also home to some big companies: Hallmark, H&R Block, Sprint Nextel as well as the VFW (who were holding their annual convention while we were there - attended by the President, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama and Fred Thompson). While I did enjoy parts of my week there, I was happy to get out of dodge. The 100 degree heat was a major bummer, and the working conditions sucked. It was with a great deal of excitement that I boarded the plane to Portland on Monday!

JV