items tagged with Prospect Park Auditorium

On August 17, the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia marked the last theatrical production I'd see this summer - the 29th show I caught over the span of 12 weeks - and in truth, I'm kind of bummed that the season is over. But it will be nice to have a few days when I'm, you know, not working, so I'm also looking forward to the fall, when instead of 29 shows, theatre-goers only have the opportunity to see ... 38.

There are actors in the Quad City Music Guild's current production of Anything Goes that are behaving like total idiots.

Thank God.

When I learned that Quad City Music Guild's new presentation of Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat would feature a cast of nearly a hundred - 98, to be exact - I was both thrilled and slightly concerned. Thrilled because ... well, come on, what fan of musicals wouldn't want to see and hear an assemblage of that many performers?

But my concern stemmed from wondering what director Harold Truitt was going to do with them all. Even with 56 members of the children's chorus seated on both sides of the stage, apart from the main action, 42 seemed a rather excessive number of participants for this enjoyably featherweight biblical piece. Would Joseph's enormity prove beneficial, or detrimental?

At Thursday's preview performance of Quad City Music Guild's Thoroughly Modern Millie, I seated myself in the third-to-last row of the Prospect Park theatre, yet even at that distance, I found myself distracted by an intense, nearly blinding illumination shining from center stage. It turns out, though, that this wasn't any kind of technical glitch; it was just Melissa Anderson Clark grinning at us.

As it was a technical dress rehearsal with four days to go before opening night, it was understandable that the March 19 presentation of Quad City Music Guild's Beehive encountered a few glitches. The scene transitions were on the poky side; it was often unclear, during the frequent medleys, whether musical numbers were supposed to end with applause or not (there were a few too many uncomfortable pauses); and the sound, during Act I especially, obviously needed polish - the over-amplification on the opening number, in particular, was painful.

But when all was said and done, there was only one thing sorely missing from this presentation: An audience. Because when Beehive's performers finally get one, this thing is gonna go through the roof.