Recently, there’s been a lot of opportunity to think about what needs to happen when a long-running series comes to a close (it’s because of Game of Thrones). The short answer is a lot, even if it comes down to a few words. There’s the story and there’s the characters. Does the story service the characters? Do the characters fit into where the story ends? Does it just feel…right?
And that doesn’t even factor in if the whole thing can stand up to fan’s expectations or whether it buckles under the weight. (Whether and how much fan’s expectations should even matter is a whole separate conversation.) There can be also be an element of nerves, for creators and fans alike, about whether something will or won’t stick the landing while trying to juggle all of the pieces of the puzzle that go into it. The metaphor is mixed, but endings are complicated!
Thankfully, for fans of this series, there’s no need to worry. The Speakeasy Society gives The Kansas Collection the ending it deserves with Chapter Ten: The Portal.
The Portal picks up where the previous two chapters left off. Phil Daring learned he can sort of do magic with the help of Glinda (aka the Good Witch), and Oscar (formerly The Wizard) and wants to save Phil’s twin sister Phoebe Daring. Jack and Tik are working with them. On the other side, Phoebe has been almost completely subsumed by Ozma (aka The Lost Princess of Oz), now in possession of the silver slippers. She’s promoted Jo Files to her general and plans to use Lavender Pipt’s potions to petrify the people of Kansas (Earth, in our parlance) after she opens the biggest portal possible. The Tin Man has joined up with them in between chapters and the Lion is stuck with them after an unfortunate run in with Pipt’s potion of petrification. The audience is present to help stop Ozma, join her and get shelter from the brewing storm, or some combination thereof. (Whew.)
Taking place at the appropriately grand McCarty Memorial Christian Church, The Portal is the biggest chapter of The Kansas Collection. The titular portal threatens to tear apart both Earth and Oz if Ozma doesn’t take over the world first. Ostensibly, the fate of the world is at stake, but the Speakeasy Society, wisely, decides to anchor everything in their characters. Chiefly Phil and Phoebe/Ozma, but each gets their chance to shine. We’ll get there in a second though.
Once inside the church, the audience is split into two large groups, determining their path through the show. Loosely, those paths are based around Phil on one side and Ozma on the other. The larger groups are split again into smaller groups to map onto the character combinations on each track.
This is both a bad and a good thing. On one hand, it means there’s no guarantee you’re going to spend time with the characters you may have previously been aligned with or been drawn to because of the way they’re split up. (If you lean hard to one side or the other, you may want to note that at check-in as they do have a mechanism to place people on a certain track.) It’s hard to say how this affects the storytelling because I’m not sure what beats are shared between each track. For what it’s worth, I ended up on the Ozma path and felt like I received a complete story.
On the other hand, it lets the company drill down into their characters in ways that they haven’t truly been able to before. This is as much because of all the work they’ve done of turning the denizens of Oz into fully realized characters through the previous nine chapters as it is to the fact that they have more time to spend with them here because audiences don’t have scenes with every character. (Like I said, good and bad.) This includes at least one combination that hasn’t even interacted up to this point. Their time together takes a quieter turn than you might expect and makes for one of the strongest scenes in the whole chapter.
All of the characters on the Ozma side gain new shading and start to move in new directions (and I assume something similar happens on the Phil side). New directions that send them into big moments that they’ve earned over their time in Kansas. It’s a testament to Speakeasy’s choice to launch a three year long episodic immersive theatre series. It’s a testament to their writing that they’ve kept a grasp on who these characters are and where they would go. It’s a testament to the actors who have lived these roles across so many shows and sell their arcs.
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The Kansas Collection audience was allowed their first true choice of the saga way back in Chapter One: The Key in an intimate one-on-one scene with either Phil or Phoebe. The Portal brings everything back to that moment with a twist. The heart of the show comes down to the Daring twins. With the audience brought back together, the two now have their own one-on-one scene in full view of their subjects and recruits, friends and enemies.
Matthew Bamberg-Johnson (Phil) and Genevieve Gearhart (Ozma/Phoebe) offer up their best work of the series here. Phil is still Phil, but he’s more confident and focused, he knows what, or rather who he’s doing all of this for and Bamberg-Johnson keeps those elements balanced. Ozma is at the height of her powers and hubris, but even as she’s at the zenith, Gearhart sneaks some doubt in under the character’s over-the-top nature. The two go back and forth about all the choices that led them to this point in time and the choices they’re still making to move on from it. It’s a lovely moment that doesn’t just go back to the beginning because it’s easy, but because it wants to push the ideas forward.
In the midst of this intimate scene, the Speakeasy Society goes big (for them) with their special effects. Magic starts to factor into the standoff between the two siblings, and to give it that extra oomph, the crew works in sound and lighting cues. The techniques are simple, but effective and they add just enough without yanking the audience out of the unfolding drama.
The ending isn’t without a small hiccup though. At one point it veers too hard into telling rather than showing. A monologue goes on longer than it needs to and hammers a point home. One that it could have touched on and then let the audience fill in the details based on the strong work in the rest of the chapter.
Other than that, the ending wraps up nicely. Some of the magic in this scene might not totally track, but everything feels emotionally true to both the story and the characters. There’s some bitter and there’s some sweet. Sacrifice and redemption. Sadness and hope. Catharsis. Every character left gets a moment to close out their story. And again, those moments are earned, coming out of the growth they’ve experienced across ten chapters. They’re as impactful for those watching and seeing that growth, as they are for the characters experiencing them.
The show has made much of the choices the audience can make throughout and those may have had some small effects on the run of the show. Wisely though, there is no choice for the audience to make that can affect the final outcome. This is akin the games they’ve cited as influences where the player can make choices, but things will often end up in a similar place no matter the decision. Instead, the weight comes from the choices made to get to that point. What made you decide to stick with Patchwork even as the threads came undone? Did you choose to Revolt? Could you stay true to your pledge to Ozma?
Those big choices and many of the small ones that came with them help make this your story, your own journey through Oz even if they didn’t meaningfully change the end. And that’s okay. Better than okay really because it allowed the Speakeasy Society to make the end definitive, satisfying, meaningful.
Chapter Ten: The Portal runs June 6-8. Tickets are still available.
To learn more about The Kansas Collection, read An Oral History of the Speakeasy Society’s Kansas Collection.
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