There’s a moment when Countryside’s The Music Man sparks and crackles to life and it’s courtesy of tiny Grace Shinn (played by the sweet Mary Murphy). She single handedly puts the show in her pocket and runs away with it three different times. It’s heart-warming, downright adorable and makes you so happy theatre is back […]
You know when they say film versions of stage plays often “open them up” with exterior settings or other visual changes that are not possible or feasible in a theater? Well, two already remarkable stage shows at this month’s Mississippi Bend Players – the top-notch professional summer stock at Augustana College – have benefitted from […]
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? More specifically, a summer evening spent watching a performance of Shakespeare as the sun shines golden on a stone amphitheater? Genesius Guild is showing “Measure for Measure (abridged)”, which will run for two more nights on June 26 and June 27 at 7pm in the Rock Island […]
Imagine me sitting in a car like Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood giving finger guns to Mike Schulz and saying, “You’re Mike F-ing Schulz! Don’t you forget it.” He deserves this level of hype, this level of praise, this level of Lets-Put-An-Actor-On-An-Unecessary- Pedastal-ness for Mississippi Bend Players’ new “Red.” All. Of […]
Words and art are my business – as tools, objects of affection, contemplation and worship, ways to make sense and meaning of life – as they are for “Red,” the brilliant, caustic, literate John Logan play given a fantastic, thrilling new production by Mississippi Bend Players at Augustana College. Over an emotional 90-minute rollercoaster — […]
“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” is streaming on HBO Max Much like life, franchises find a way. Sooner or later, they realize they can’t keep doing the same thing over and over, and they need to evolve. The Fast and the Furious began as a charmingly low rent ripoff of Point Break. […]
So there I am driving home with my sausage pizza from Gunchies Davenport. I’m jamming out to NWA rolling in my 2007 Honda Minivan, Pepto Bismol for my tummy ache that’s coming from my eventual encounter with too much pizza and dog treats for my husky Abrodog Lincoln, all in my reusable Hyvee bag #savetheearth […]
Tonight I got two phone numbers. I wasn’t trying for either, however I guess I still have game. Not many BBQ ribs around here are suck-the-meat-off-the-bone good. But hot damn Smokey’s Country Diner in East Moline is a winner. There I was minding my own business, gnawing every morsel of deliciousness off the bone when […]
Sixteen months after the Spotlight Theatre staged its last major musical, it’s provided the pitch-perfect, post-pandemic production – “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Simple, sweet, nostalgic – both exuberantly childlike and loaded with the weight of the world on its young shoulders – the beloved 1967 musical based on the classic “Peanuts” characters has […]
I really wanted to enjoy Quad-City Music Guild’s first complete musical in a year and a half, “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” which is available to be streamed online June 11 and 12 at 7:30 p.m., and June 13 at 2 p.m. But due more to its supremely silly, groan-inducing, seemingly unending source material than its eminently […]
