Meghan Hakes, Lori Dansby, and Joshua Estrada in Chicago All things considered, Friday night's presentation of Chicago at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre was pretty darned impressive.

Alison Luff in Thoroughly Modern Millie When he took the stage before Thursday night's presentation of Thoroughly Modern Millie, the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's producing artistic director - and Millie director - Craig A. Miller mentioned that audiences might notice a couple of changes at the 'Boat this year.

You Can't Take It with You ensemble members Thursday's opening-night presentation of You Can't Take It with You at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre was polished, snappily paced, and almost universally well-performed. But attendance was hardly what it should have been for this venerated Kaufman & Hart comedy - I'd venture that less than two-thirds of the seats were filled - and truth be told, it's not hard to figure out why.

How wonderful and humbling the last eight months have been.

Black comedy is tough to pull off, and camp is even tougher, so it's no small praise to say that the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's production of Ruthless is a huge success. This savvy, ballsy musical about a mother-daughter duo who will literally kill to succeed in show biz is so mean and bitchy that it's sure to piss off or offend all the right people, and it's a credit to the comic subversion of the theatre's artistic director, Jay Berkow, that he chose Ruthless as the theatre's Sound of Music follow-up. The show is vicious and borderline inhuman ... and I could barely see my notepad through my tears of laughter.