the cast of Elegies: A Song Cycle From the opening minutes of Elegies: A Song Cycle, the debut presentation by the Riverbend Theatre Collective, it's clear that the production is going to be beautifully performed. An uninterrupted, 90-minute collection of reminiscences by composer William Finn, the revue finds Allison Collins-Elfline, Patrick Gimm, Jackie Madunic, Dana Joel Nicholson, and Bryan J. Tank offering musical tributes to people (and pets) that Finn loved and lost, and they form an intimidatingly strong vocal ensemble, excellent in their solos and even finer in harmony.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince CaspianTHE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN

All things considered, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is pretty good, and on a purely technical level, it's more than pretty impressive. In his second stab at C.S. Lewis, director Andrew Adamson has fashioned a continuation that's both darker and lighter than 2005's The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe - the film is admirably grim for a Disney outing, and unlike its predecessor, it maintains a sense of humor throughout - and most of its visuals are extraordinary. Yet I still can't build up much enthusiasm for it, because like many recent works of its kind (including The Golden Compass and the last two Harry Potters), the movie wows you with everything except personality. Prince Caspian is epically scaled, gorgeous, and hollow - a Pirates of the Caribbean without Johnny Depp.

Woodstock on the Rock

Martini's on the Rock

Sunday, May 25, noon-10 p.m.

 

Mick Verschorre In times of crisis, it helps to have friends. And as you'll see during May 25's Woodstock on the Rock benefit event, Mick Verschorre (pictured) has a bunch.

Eddie Staver III in Life's a Dream Say what you will about the Prenzie Players' latest presentation, but you can't say that the classical-theatre troupe, with its production of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's Life's a Dream, is merely resting on its laurels.

12 Angry Men ensemble members Near as I can tell, there are two types of people: those who like Reginald Rose's jury-room drama 12 Angry Men, and those who haven't seen it yet. So speedy and smart, so filled with personality and (mostly) unforced emotion, the work seems practically indestructible, and I actually fall into a special subset of people: those who love 12 Angry Men with a passion bordering on mania. (Between Sidney Lumet's 1957 film version and the 1997 television remake, I've watched it - and this is a conservative estimate - more than three dozen times.) So it was with nearly delirious excitement, and just a touch of dread, that I attended the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Saturday-night presentation of the show, the first stage production of Rose's piece that I'd seen.

Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci in Speed RacerSPEED RACER

In future years, when I'm wondering exactly when it was that I turned into a very old man, I'm hoping I'll remember the date of May 9, 2008, when I fell asleep some 45 minutes into the onslaught of candy-colored incoherence called Speed Racer. And when, after returning to consciousness a minute or so later, I made it through another couple of scenes before falling asleep again.

35th Annual Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest Awards Night

Butterworth Center

Saturday, May 17, 7-10 p.m

 

These haiku concern
The Mississippi Valley
Poetry contest.

On May seventeenth,
The Butterworth Center hosts
A gala event -

Sponsored, in part, by
The Midwest Writing Center -
Honoring authors.

the Elegies ensemble Describing composer William Finn's Elegies: A Song Cycle, the first presentation by the Quad Cities' new theatrical company the Riverbend Theatre Collective, artistic director Allison Collins-Elfline says of the show, "It's quirky, it's fun, it's upbeat ... ."

Yet it's also a considerable risk for a fledgling theatrical organization's first outing, as the subject of the Tony-winning composer's quirky, fun, upbeat musical revue is, as its title suggests, death. "An elegy is a hymn of praise for someone who has passed on," states Collins-Elfline, "and Elegies is about all the people William Finn knew that he's lost."

Brian Bengtson, Katie Wyant, and Kyle Roggenbuck in Romance Language If you majored in English, or are currently majoring in English, or simply wish that you'd majored in English, Peter Parnell's comic fantasia Romance Language might sound like an almost obscene amount of fun. Or perhaps merely obscene, as Augustana College's latest presentation finds Walt Whitman traveling cross-country with Huck Finn, Ralph Waldo Emerson pining over the deceased Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson abandoning her lesbian lover for a Native American warrior, Louisa May Alcott embracing her wild side as an uninhibited dance-hall girl ... . The experience of Romance Language is like tumbling down Lewis Carroll's rabbit hole and landing smack in the middle of a 19th Century American Literature course.

As an English major myself, I say: Awesome.

Robert Downey Jr. in Iron ManIRON MAN

I'd love to tell you about the numerous, big-budget action sequences in Iron Man, the first of the many, many special-effects-laden extravaganzas hitting multiplexes this summer. But a day-and-a-half after seeing the movie, I don't remember much about them. I know there was an early scene in which the Iron Man prototype attacked an Afghan army with flamethrowers before whooshing his way to safety, and a scene where the new-and-improved version evaded American fighter jets, and a climax featuring our metal-plated hero battling a hulking creature with the body of a tank and the voice of Jeff Bridges. Beyond that, though, they're mostly a blur.

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