items tagged with Quad City Music Guild

There are so many delightful distractions in Quad City Music Guild’s Cinderella that, during Thursday night’s preview performance, I kept getting lost in the scenery. And then the costumes. And then the vocals. And then the scenery... .

In the beloved Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland films of the 1930s, staging a full-length musical production seemed ridiculously easy: A bunch of talented youths would simply unite with the rallying cry “Let’s put on a show!”

“It was really just kind of casual,” says Potts of the Quad City Singers’ 1994 beginnings. “Just friends getting together and deciding, ‘You know, we like to sing, so let’s form a group and see what happens.’”

A day after seeing it, I still can’t decide whether I like playwright Jim Leonard Jr.’s And They Dance Real Slow in Jackson, but I do know that I appreciate director Patti Flaherty’s efforts in staging this nonlinear tale for New Ground Theatre. During Friday’s performance, I struggled to follow the action, as Leonard’s script confusingly jumps back and forth in time. Thankfully, however, Flaherty’s directorial work helps create some clarity to the “when” with which we’re dealing.

As we’ve come to annually expect, there was practically no end to the highlights from this past year in area theatre.

It’s doubtful anyone needs to be told that launching a new theatre company – particularly in an area already rife with theatre companies – can be a risky venture, which is likely why Quad Cities-based organizations have tended to debut with relatively low-risk offerings. In 2008, the Harrison Hilltop Theatre chose to stage, as its first production, David Auburn’s intimate, four-character drama Proof; a week later, the Curtainbox Theatre Company arrived on the scene with Three Viewings, a trio of Jeffrey Hatcher monologues.

And what is Davenport native Nathan Porteshawver, the founder of the Internet Players, presenting for his new theatre company’s debut offering? An original drama that Porteshawver himself wrote.

In verse.

With a cast of 17 actors.

And nine musicians.