It’s hard not to like “Lucky Stiff,” the fun, fizzy musical farce now playing at Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse, Rock Island, in its Quad Cities premiere. In dark, depressing, heavy times like this (in an Arctic winter), this 1988 show by acclaimed Broadway veterans Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (“Ragtime,” “Anastasia,” “Once on This Island” […]
Long before the acclaimed black comedy-drama “Succession” ruled prestige TV (on HBO 2018-23), two other intense royal power struggles ruled stages and screens – Shakespeare’s “King Lear” (1606) and James Goldman’s “The Lion in Winter” (1966). Logan Roy (the scarily intimidating Brian Cox) of “Succession” wasn’t an actual king, but a media king, utterly ruthless, […]
Seeing the giddily entertaining “Young Frankenstein” musical at The Spotlight Theatre is like watching a classic B-movie spring to glorious life. This true “monster” of a show faithfully recreates the supremely silly 2007 Mel Brooks show, especially fitting for this sprawling gothic space, in the 1931 former Scottish Rite Cathedral at 1800 7th Ave., Moline. […]
Let’s hope QC Music Guild and Countryside Community Theatre don’t get any federal funding, because it would be yanked after two of this summer’s most satisfying, proudly pro-DEI shows — Guild’s “The Prom,” and its spiritual parent, Countryside’s current musical “Hairspray.” Both boasting the obvious conclusion that diversity, equity and inclusion are societal strengths (and […]
It’s hard to go wrong with “Disney’s Newsies: The Musical.” But that doesn’t mean at all that it’s easy to get right. The glorious, massive show – given an expert, exhilarating production by Countryside Community Theatre – is a classic “underdog vs. topdog” battle. Scrappy, poor, relentlessly tenacious newspaper carriers (the newsies) go on strike […]
