[Editor's note: On February 3, Harrison Hilltop producers Tristan Tapscott and Chris Walljasper announced the cancellation of the remaining performances for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.]

As much as I like theatre, three hours in a chair can be a bit too much for me. The Harrison Hilltop Theatre's recent production of Long Day's Journey Into Night felt long, but mainly because the show's script is populated with lengthy, repetitious monologues. Its current production, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is roughly the same length, but doesn't have the same plodding feeling. Perhaps it's because almost every line in the play seems weighty yet unpretentious, with an overall pacing quick enough to both keep and force your attention, lest you miss a sharp-tongued phrase.

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.