items tagged with John Pfautz

Supposedly a family-friendly audience favorite, The Secret Garden, currently being performed at Augustana College, is an emotional but often downright dreary musical based on the classic children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I know few children - or adults, for that matter - with the stamina to make it through this production, which lasted almost three hours on opening night. But duration aside, the decision by director Jeff Coussens and musical director John Pfautz to even attempt to stage Garden, with its cast of 19 in the relatively-intimate Potter Hall, was an audacious one that succeeded on both vocal and visual levels.

Genesius Guild opened its 51st season on Saturday with Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operetta Patience - co-produced by Opera @ Augustana - and the signs were good right from the beginning.

This past weekend, it was rainy, gloomy, and downright cold for this time of year. Let's face it: The weather sucked.

And thinking about all the local outdoor events where attendance might have been negatively affected by the climate - Race for the Cure, the Left Bank Fine Art Fair, Gumbo Ya Ya, et cetera, et cetera - I couldn't bear to not attend Genesius Guild's and Opera@Augustana's Saturday-night performance of The Mikado. Foul weather be damned - if The Mikado's cast and orchestra were going to suffer the elements, then by God, so was I.

When you take in a Genesius Guild production at Rock Island’s Lincoln Park – when you take in any theatrical performance outdoors – you’re at the mercy of the weather, and every once in a while the elements and the production itself will align in a way that feels like perfection.