Winner of six 2013 Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Score for pop icon Cyndi Lauper, the high-kicking musical Kinky Boots enjoys its first long-running area engagement at Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse January 15 through March 14, the show called “cause for celebration” by Entertainment Weekly and, according to Time Out New York, “the very model of a modern major musical.”

In a unique blend of sound art and public reading, the latest presentation in the Midwest Writing Center's Spectra series, Bradley/Clifton/Miller, will find noted writers Jon Miller and Brian Clifton collaborating with sound artist William Ellis Bradley to create a thrilling, multi-modal experience at Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox, the January 8 event also boasting readings by local authors Beth Roberts and Ryan Collins.

Praised by AllMusic.com for their “intriguing and quite effective blend of hard melodic rock with progressive rock tendencies and awesome vocal arrangements,” the musicians of the iconic rock ensemble Head East play a special concert at East Moline's the Rust Belt on January 10, performing more than a half-century after the band's formation and eight years after being inducted into the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Music Association's Hall of Fame.

With the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel raving that “they sing and play with a lusty ease that blows the dust off old music,” the vocal and instrumental talents of the Rose Ensemble serve as the latest guests in Quad City Arts' Visiting Artists series, their January 15 through 18 concert events sure to prove why the Duluth News Tribune stated, “The Rose Ensemble always creates a colorful blend of text and tune, woven together for a seamless tapestry of music from distant times and places.”

There are certain things you expect from any film or television version of Little Women: coltish enthusiasm courtesy of Jo; homespun wisdom courtesy of Marmee; buckets of tears, our tears, courtesy of Beth thanking Mr. Laurence for the piano and eventually succumbing to terminal illness. (I'm presuming that plot points from a 150-year-old novel can't possibly qualify as spoilers.) One thing you don't expect, however, is the unexpected, which turns out to be what writer/director Greta Gerwig's glorious, exceedingly original take on Louisa May Alcott delivers in spades.

Senator Steve Landek (D-Bridgeview) and other Senate Democrats have been meeting since the 2018 session as part of a loosely-affiliated group that calls itself the "X Caucus." They apparently didn't know what to call themselves, so "X" filled in the blank.

Sexual-harassment dramas aren't designed to be fun. Try telling that to my expression, however, as I grinned and occasionally giggled throughout Bombshell, director Jay Roach's and screenwriter Charles Randolph's fictionalized account of how longtime Fox News chairman and chief executive Roger Ailes was eventually brought down by his, and his network's, systemic mistreatment of women.