I really like Chicago. Its tuneful score, uniquely vaudevillian presentation, and delightfully naughty nature make it one of my favorite stage musicals. There’s one number in the show, however, that tops them all for me: “Cell Block Tango,” which is sexy, fun, and what I consider the benchmark for the overall production. And on Friday night, my entertainment needs would’ve been met, and then some, had the District Theatre’s production actually ended after this number, even thought it’s only the fourth song in the piece.

New Ground Theatre’s God of Carnage is one of the funniest shows, if not the funniest, I’ve seen on a Quad Cities stage so far this year. Not only is the script by playwright Yasmina Reza sharp, surprising, and witty, but director Derek Bertelsen’s handling of the pacing and his cast’s character choices had me laughing embarrassingly loudly at Thursday’s performance. Even two days later, I find myself mentally inserting quotable dialogue from the play into conversations (though I’d rather not quote any of it here, as most of the best lines involve the “F” word).

“Most of our students work jobs when they’re not at school,” says Scott Community College (SCC) theatre instructor Steve Flanigin. “So when you say, ‘We’re going to do a play – who’d be interested?’, you have to see who’s available before you decide what play you can do. Because if they have to go to a job when we normally rehearse – Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, from three to five – then they can’t do the show.

“I think that’s one of the challenges of doing theatre at a community college that a lot of people don’t realize,” he continues. “What we do depends on who is here in the fall or the spring, and what their schedules are like. I mean, I’d love to do Hello, Dolly!, but not with four people.”

Happily for Flanigin, he was able to secure roughly a dozen student participants for the school’s latest production. And while that number wasn’t large enough for a Hello, Dolly!, it was perfectly appropriate for the show that he and fellow SCC instructor John Turner did choose: a new adaptation of author H.G. Wells’ alien-invasion classic War of the Worlds, running October 20 through 30.

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