Another year of area stage productions has come and gone, and wanting to try something different this December, Reader theatre reviewer Thom White and I thought we'd bypass our traditional, end-of-year postmortem in favor of an alternate approach: requesting 100-words-or-fewer submissions from our readers on what people found particularly memorable about the 2013 stage scene. "It'll be something new!" we thought. "It'll be exciting! It'll be filled with fresh voices that aren't ours!" And, I must admit, we were dazzled with the overall response.

Well, "dazzled" may be overstating it.

Hmmm ... what's the word I'm looking for ... ?

"Mortified," maybe ... ?

SAVING MR. BANKS

Saving Mr. Banks concerns the efforts of the crinkly-eyed Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) in getting the persnickety, Hollywood-averse British author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) to sign over the book rights to Mary Poppins. (Spoiler Alert: He does.) And as it's a Disney movie about a Disney movie with Disney products and Disney people - including Uncle Walt himself - popping up nearly every time you blink, the cynic in me resisted director John Lee Hancock's dramatic comedy for as long as humanly possible. Then Thompson's seemingly impenetrable Travers broke down while watching the Banks family sing "Let's Go Fly a Kite" at Mary Poppins' first public screening, and I was a goner. Aw crap, I thought while wiping away tears. Two more minutes and I would've been fine.

Theatre

Matt & Ben

Rozz-Tox

Saturday, December 14, 8 p.m., and Sunday, December 15, 3 p.m.

If you're in your early 20s or younger, you probably know Matt Damon as the cool, laid-back star of Elysium and the Jason Bourne movies, and probably know Ben Affleck as the cool, laid-back director/star of Argo and The Town. Regardless, and depending on your level of vitriol about Affleck playing Batman, you probably like the guys. But if you can believe it, there actually was a time, not so very long ago, when both celebrities were ... . Gosh, what's the word ... ? Hated. A lot.

Singer Joey Niceforo, the founder and frontman for the musical quartet Destino, first met two of his group's other members - violinist Rosemary Siemens and pianist Roy Tan - when all three were active in the operatic ensemble The Canadian Tenors in 2006. The fourth member, tenor Terance Reddick, joined Destino two years later, and initially auditioned for the group by singing opera over the phone.

Yet if you plan on seeing these Quad City Arts visiting artists in their December 15 area concert, don't expect a program composed solely of arias and cadenzas. It's not every ensemble, after all, that can boast a repertoire ranging from "Ave Maria" to the Beatles' "Yesterday" to Aerosmith's "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing."