Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! God is dead. Well, maybe not THAT God, but did anyone ever see Stephen Sondheim and God in the same room? And now, He is gone – the legendary Broadway composer and lyricist died Nov. 26, 2021 (fittingly on Black Friday) at age 91 – but will never be forgotten, since we have the sacred texts. In recent years, especially since the 2016 death of my mother, I have had grave... Read More

In the book Let it Snow!, jointly written by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle, the character Tobin is terrified to ask his best friend Angie out because he doesn’t want to risk an unhappy ending. But he secretly loves her. And over the course of their adventure to get to a Waffle House during a blizzard in North Carolina, Tobin starts to court the idea of a happy middle… regardless of whether things go to pieces. Composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, and bookwriter Arthur Laurents, approached West Side Story with the same sensibility. Quad City Music Guild... Read More

Boy, boy, silly boy… get your tickets now, boy! That’s because it’s time for “West Side Story!” Music Guild’s July show opens July 7th and runs July 7th thru the 9th and again July 13th thru the 16th. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is transported to modern-day New York City as two young, idealistic lovers find themselves caught between warring street gangs, the “American” Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. Their struggle to survive in a world of hate, violence and prejudice is one of the most innovative, heart-wrenching and relevant musical dramas of our time. From the first notes... Read More