Arriving at Moline's Spotlight Theatre just in time for Halloween, the professional dancers of Ballet Quad Cities will stage choreographer Deanna Carter's adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic horror novel Dracula on October 19 and 20, with the notorious count portrayed by international dance star Domingo Rubio and performances preceded by the debuting vignettes of Frankenstein's Follies.
This feature collects articles published online by Quad Cities-area media outlets and by CapitolFax.com and the state-politics sections of the Des Moines Register and the State Journal-Register.
Heroic women, both fictional and real, will be celebrated in the Putnam Museum & Science Center's avidly anticipated Literary Heroines: Their Times, Their Fashions – an October 13 through January 4 exhibition notable not only for its breadth of clothing and period items from the museum's permanent collection, but for being the rare area exhibit that isn't making a local appearance as part of a larger national or international tour. As Putnam President and CEO Kim Findlay says, “We didn't find it – we created it.”
Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of hearing my colleague at St. Ambrose University, Marian Lee and her musical cohort pound out some fantastic French music – sophisticated, complex and still relevant. Interpreting that music, your dancers were absolutely impressive – detailed, crisp, upbeat, easily avoiding any camp in the rompier moments and conveying some profoundly human material with their silent bodies. I’m in love with them!
Making an eagerly awaited stop at the Adler Theatre in support of his most recent album Here Comes the Truth – the inspiration for the performer's 2017 Netflix special – comedian and singer/songwriter Rodney Carrington brings his standup and vocal talents to Davenport on October 12, sharing the country-themed gifts that have made him an internationally touring crowd favorite and platinum-selling recording artist.
Dear JB Pritzker,
I totally understand the campaign politics of not wanting to say what you think the income-tax rates should be under a graduated tax structure. I also get why you won’t say what ought to be the income level at which people will begin paying a higher income-tax rate than they do now.
Actually, nearly everyone understands your political calculation. It’s elementary. You don’t want to give the other side any ammunition to attack you.
As I have shared in the past, every now and then I have the privilege (and, yes, personal indulgence) to write about people near and dear to my heart. Such is the case with Gregg Johnson and his candidacy for the Illinois State Senate's 36th District. And in the spirit of full disclosure, he is my favorite boy cousin on my mother's side.
JB Pritzker was recently endorsed by Crain’s Chicago Business. Yes, you read that right. The state’s premiere business magazine endorsed a candidate whose biggest promise is to raise taxes on the publication’s well-off subscriber base.
The Anti-Harassment, Equality, and Access (AHEA) panel set up by the Democratic Party earlier this year released its final recommendations last week.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a landmark decision (Naperville Smart Meter Awareness v. City of Naperville) on behalf of all Americans by determining that the Fourth Amendment protects smart-meter data collected by energy companies from being searched or seized by government without probable cause and/or appropriate warrants.
Hearings. Depositions. Victims. Accusers. Lies. I am not talking about our recent news cycle, but rather Augustana College’s production of The Crucible. When director Jennifer Popple decided to set her show in the unspecific future, she couldn’t possibly have guessed that 2018, without even trying, would give the play such abundant relevance.
It was Sunday, October 30 in 1938 New York, and the country was on edge as Orson Welles went live via Madison Avenue and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in a Halloween episode hosted by Mercury Theater on the Air. A dramatic, science-fiction radio play, the program caused panic amongst communities who mistook the broadcast for real-life events as alien invaders, described in detail, appeared ready to take over the world.
That's the real-life tale told in the Black Box Theatre's unique production of War of the Worlds: A Radio Play, and while Friday's performance was only about an hour long with no intermission, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Based on the novel by H.G. Wells and adapted from the radio-play script by Howard E. Koch, this singular story directed and designed by Lora Adams is quite different from the theatrical productions I typically attend – and different in a good way.
The beloved tale of a pig, a spider, and a timeless storybook friendship kicks off Davenport Junior Theatre's 67th season with the October 13 through 21 presentation of Charlotte's Web, the 1952 children's book by E.B. White now being brought to stage life in a colorful, fun-filled production involving more than 40 students from 11 different area cities.
If Halloween is approaching, it must be time for that annual theatrical command: “Let's do the 'Time Warp' again!” Consequently, the Circa '21 Speakeasy will stage its third-annual presentation of the cult-musical smash The Rocky Horror Show from October 19 through 27, treating audiences to live performances of classic songs and, of course, prop bags to complete the interactive experience.
There was a certain air of rowdiness at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's opening-night production of Mama Won't Fly, and rightfully so, as the champagne fountain was flowing in celebration of the theatre's final production of its 41st season. Everyone seemed ready for a good laugh, and on those terms, I don't think any of us left disappointed.
Described by NoDepression.com as possessing “a natural signature sound that is as timeless as it is enjoyable,” and with his home country's The Saturday Paper deeming his latest album Gon' Boogaloo “a masterpiece,” Australian blues artist C.W. Stoneking headlines a Moeller Nights concert on October 19, sharing the talents that led The Guardian to call him “a droll entertainer with a flair for making old-timey sounds into party music for the present.”
Boasting more than 94 charted records and 45 top-10 hits between them – among them such indelible recordings as “Stand by Me,” “Yakkety Yak,” “On Broadway,” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” – a trio of iconic ensembles will share the Adler Theatre stage on October 20 when the Davenport venue welcomes The Drifters, Cornell Gunter's Coasters, and The Platters for an unforgettable evening of R&B, doo-wop, pop, and soul.
A pair of highly regarded country musicians from Nashville will team up at the Ohnward Fine Arts Center on October 20, when the Maquoketa-based venue presents the touring sensation The Dave & Daphne Show – an evening of toe-tapping originals and country and gospel favorites performed by recording stars Dave Salyer and Daphne Anderson.
A jazz great with significant ties to the area makes a return appearance at Davenport's Redstone Room on October 21, with chanteuse, composer, and music educator Semenya McCord performing with her quartet in Polyrhythms' Third Sunday Jazz Workshop & Matinée Series, the concert event also featuring Boston-based pianist Frank Wilkins and a tribute to legendary trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.
With Exclaim! praising his latest album as “a soft and sumptuous collection” that “features some of the finest songs of his career,” Grammy-winning folk rocker Ray LaMontagne plays Davenport's Adler Theatre on October 24 in support of his 2018 release Part of the Light, a work that led Spill magazine to state, “The only disappointing aspect of this albuym is that it is only nine songs long.”
You know a tearjerker is really working when, in its last 15 minutes, the mere sight of a well-done steak is enough to get viewers weepy. But the latest iteration of A Star Is Born – the third American remake of this timeless show-biz melodrama since 1937's original (itself a sort of remake of 1932's What Price Hollywood?) – is a tearjerker that leaves you less wiped out than electrified.
Friday, September 28, 10:45 a.m.-ish: It used to be said, and maybe still is, that those wanting to sell film scripts during Hollywood pitch meetings were required to describe their potential projects in 25 words or fewer. That always sounded a little restrictive to me. Yet as I headed into my latest quadruple feature, I was pretty sure I could effectively nutshell Friday's lineup using only four words per title: “abominable snowman discovers humans,” “amusement park serial killer,” “Louisa May Alcott – again,” and the day's jump-starter “Haddish schools Hart, bitches!”
Given that his directorial credits have included a couple of Hostels, the gory Cabin Fever, and the unapologetically repellant cannibal shocker The Green Inferno, hiring Eli Roth to helm a kiddie scare comedy seemed, at first, to be a phenomenally terrible idea, like putting Lars von Trier in charge of church camp or asking Tarantino to babysit. Amazingly, however, Roth proves himself the right director for the job of The House with a Clock in Its Walls, a movie no funnier or scarier than, say, 2015's Jack Black vehicle Goosebumps, but one with plenty of charm, sweetness, and child-friendly gross-outs. Roth being Roth, know that you will witness projectile vomiting. But the puke is wholly composed of pumpkin guts, and the face it lands on is Black's, so you know … . No harm, no foul.
“Was it all just a dream?” Those were the first words uttered by an off-screen Michael Moore in his 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore's incensed indictment of George W. Bush's first years in office (and, because it's Moore, a bunch of other things, too). Those same words, not at all coincidentally, open Moore's new Fahrenheit 11/9, the numerically swapped title a reference to the day in 2016 that Donald T. Trump was officially named our nation's president. The difference between those identically worded openers, though, lies in the timbre of Moore's voice. In 9/11, he was recognizably sardonic and faux ingenuous, following the question with snarky references to Ben Affleck and Robert De Niro. In 11/9, however, “Was it all just a dream?” sounds like the lament of a truly sad, incredulous man – one who can't believe that, 14 years later, he's forced to ask the same damned question again, and likely to ever-less-receptive ears.
Even though Hollywood's summer tends to begin in the last days of April and end a couple weekends before Labor Day, it is, you know, still technically summer. Consequently, I feel completely within my rights to decree The Predator perhaps the happiest summer-movie surprise of 2018 – a thrillingly funny, nasty, unpretentious good time that's leagues more entertaining than any deeply unnecessary sequel/reboot of its type should ever be.
New exhibitions of screen prints and photographs will be on display October 19 through November, as Rock Island's Quad City Arts Center presents A Guide to Domestic Measurement, a collection of works by Iowa City artist Alison Filley, and Reconstructing the Rise of Asymmetrical Skylines, a creative assemblage by Davenport-based photographer Matthew Terry.
Two disparate forms of artistic media will, from October 13 through December 1, combine in one fascinating exhibit at Davenport's Bucktown Center for the Arts, when area artists Emma Farber Cunningham and Barbara Toner showcase their immense talents – and their specific mediums of interest – in the new MidCoast at Bucktown Gallery exhibition Paintings & Glass.
One of the most eagerly anticipated exhibitions in the Figge Art Museum's history will be on display from October 9 through January 6, as the Davenport venue hosts the touring French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850 – 1950, an exhibit featuring 59 works drawn from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum that chronicles one of the most dynamic and beloved eras in the history of art.
As one of the numerous autumnal events held in conjunction with the Figge Art Museum's long-awaited exhibition French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850-1950, the Davenport venue presents a special evening with renowned historian and professor Dr. Jonathan Petropolous, who will detail connections between art and global culture in his October 21 lecture From Patronage to Nazi Plunder – French Modern Art & the Jews: A Complicated History.
For the first exhibition in the college's 2018-19 academic year, the Augustana Teaching Museum of Art will showcase works by artists who honed their skills at Augustana itself, with Five Alumni: Continuing to Create, from August 24 through October 27, presenting beautiful, fascinating, and resonant works by a quintet of the school's most gifted graduates.
