items tagged with Circa 21 Dinner Playhouse

At the corner of Third Avenue and 19th Street in the Rock Island District is a glazed terra-cotta bust of an American Indian wearing a war bonnet that encircles his head, almost like the traditional painting of a halo. Arrows, peace pipes, and entwined snakes are also included in the symmetrical composition. This 10-foot-wide relief is placed above the second-story window on the rounded corner of the Fort Armstrong Theatre building.

Though the artwork is ornate, the dominant central face gives it a strong point of emphasis. The angular structure of the face and surrounding triangular patterns are counterbalanced by the overarching half-circle and circular shapes radiating from the composition’s center.

The decorative patterns around the other second-floor windows and the building’s outline are also composed of these geometric shapes and Native American symbols. The ivory-, blue-, yellow-, red-, and green-colored glaze stands out against the theatre’s dark-red brick exterior.

I found the Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse’s The Marvelous Wonderettes to be sweet, well-sung, and, frankly, borderline annoying.

For what it is, the Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse’s Nana’s Naughty Knickers is rather amusing and somewhat unexpected. The title, for me, conjures up images of scantily clad grannies telling off-color, elderly-themed jokes in a wild farce. Instead, playwright Katherine DiSavino’s piece is a mild farce, with a unique plot and interesting, likable characters (and only a handful of age-based jokes). I didn’t laugh quite as much as I expected to during Friday’s opening-night performance, but I was more engaged than I anticipated I would be, and interested in where DiSavino would take her characters.

What happens if you give a mouse a cookie? Nothing good, if you’re the cookie giver. If, however, you’re watching what unfolds by way of the Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse’s current youth-theatre offering, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, it’s a delightful experience.

“I think it came from going to church,” says area actor Pat Flaherty of his childhood interest in theatre. “Because I’d go to church, and I’d see this guy who was holding everybody’s interest through the whole service. It was very dramatic – they’d light the candles and ring the bells and everything – and for a while I thought I wanted to be a priest because of that.

“It turned out I just wanted to be on stage.”