Stage Capsule Reviews

 Affluenza! High praise goes to director Mark Ciglar and the bountifully gifted cast of James Sherman's smart, tart comedy about the poisonous effects of having too much money. Sherman's choice to write the show in rhyming couplets, à la Moliere, is distracting only until the ear gets used to it -- then it becomes damned clever. Of the uniformly winning cast, Sean Grennan's performance is particularly great, rich with wit and brattiness and, when it's least expected, earned pathos. Jennifer James Bradshaw is terrific, too, recalling the late, great Judy Holiday in the classic Born Yesterday. Through Feb. 20 at American Heartland Theatre, 2450 Grand, 816-842-9999.

Follow the Drinking Gourd The way the show is described -- a "charming story set in the era of slavery" -- sounds uncomfortably akin to Condoleezza Rice's recent testimony that the tsunami in Southeast Asia was "a wonderful opportunity" to ameliorate America's reputation as a bully. Whoops. Nevertheless, it's Paul Mesner Puppets' good intention to honor Black History Month with a character named Peg Leg Joe who travels to many plantations, ostensibly to teach slaves to sing. The title song, though, is a coded message revealing an escape route out of Alabama and Mississippi to the more benign North. Feb. 2-6 and Feb. 9-13 at Unity Temple on the Plaza, 707 W. 47th St., 816-235-6222.

Frederick Douglass: Deliverance From Chains Gene Mackey's memory play is about the title character's journey from slave to statesman. The drama is set in a re-creation of Douglass' final home in Washington, D.C., where the civil rights pioneer (Danny Cox) reminisces with Helen Pitts (Sheryl Bryant), his second wife, and a group of young history buffs. Among the themes he addresses are abolition, black employment obstacles and the controversy surrounding his marriage to Pitts, who happened to be white. Through Feb. 20 at Theatre for Young America, 5909 Johnson Drive in Mission, 913-831-2131.

Mamma Mia! Hordes of theatergoing baby boomers find this kitschy confection, which cakes a flimsy soap opera around a couple of dozen Abba songs, Abba-lutely enchanting. And I have to admit that upon my first exposure in 1999, when it was still in previews in London, it evoked the sugar-free high of chugging a six-pack of Fresca. It was in later productions that the fizz settled at the bottom of the glass. If oddly forced arrangements of "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" and "Dancing Queen" crossed with the recent reality show Who's Your Daddy? is your kind of beverage, sip away. February 8-13 at the Music Hall at Municipal Auditorium, 13th St. and Baltimore, 816-931-3330.

The Molire One Acts Sganarelle is the hottest name on the street -- well, at least the streets around the University of Missouri-Kansas City Theater Department and Union Station, where the latter's City Stage Theatre hosts the former's celebration of Moliere's most lovable rogues. In "The School for Husbands," Sganarelle is a 17th-century bourgeois prig and misogynist whose interest in a young lady isn't returned. The same name is given to a loutish and paranoid married man of the provinces in "The Imaginary Cuckold." Though both were written between 1660 and 1662, the pieces confirm why Moliere's romantic entanglements could be outtakes from Jen Chen's Night Ranger column. Through Feb. 12 at the UMKC Theater Department at Union Station's H&R Block City Stage Theatre, 816-460-2020 or 816-235-6222.

Permanent Collection If a white man finds the art made by old, dead, white Europeans more important than that produced by Africans, does that make him a racist? The argument's outcome isn't so obvious as Thomas Gibbons proposes it in his intriguing new play. Though there's much to chew on in its debates about social change and racial inclusiveness, the play periodically flirts with melodrama, and some of the cast play types rather than living, breathing humans. Dean Vivian, though, is excellent as a nebbishy white guy whose loyalty to tradition gets him branded a racist. Through Feb. 13 at the Unicorn Theatre, 3828 Main, 816-531-7529.

Self Torture and Strenuous Exercise and Futz The theory holds that, as Washington, D.C., goes all conservative and uptight, ballsy theater companies migrate toward the polar opposite. Recall performance artist Karen Finley, who was much more famous as a disempowered National Endowment for the Arts artist under the Republicans' thumb than a struggling artist circa Bill Clinton. Lawrence's EMU Theatre offers the first "fuck you" of Bush's second term with two edgy pieces. The late Harry Kondolean's Self Torture is an existential screwball comedy about people isolated by their perceptions of the universe (written way before blue state vs. red state stuff). Rochelle Owens' 1967 avant-garde classic Futz is about a man who falls head over heels for a pig. Feb 11-13 and Feb. 18-20 at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 New Hampshire, 785-843-2787.