Praised by the Los Angeles Times for its “hip, snappy dialogue and contemporary sensibilities,” as well as being an “engaging play [that] explores the reality checks that force lovers to look past their romantic illusions,” Micah Schraft's A Dog's House enjoys a New Ground Theatre staging August 9 through 18, with Broadway World lauding the author's “witty, intelligent, entertainingly thought-provoking script.”

With the New York Music Daily lauding their “darkly inventive Americana” and The Sound praising their “infectious, foot-stomping Americana tunes,” the touring musicians of Muddy Ruckus – guitarist and Quad Cities native Ryan Flaherty and “suitcase drummer” Erika Stahl – perform as Moeller Nights headliners on August 9, the duo's 2018 album Bellows to Mend described by EvolvementRadio.com as “hands down their best work so far.”

Having charted 67 tunes – six of them number-one hits – on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart between 1985 and 2017, legendary country-pop artist Vince Gill makes his long-awaited appearance at Davenport's Adler Theatre on August 14, performing from a solo repertoire that dates from 1985's The Things That Matter to his new Okie, the latter scheduled for release on August 23.

The Felice Brothers, a folk-rock/country band from the New York Catskills, land at the Triple Crown Whiskey Bar & Raccoon Motel on August 15.

Most state legislators don't have to worry about next year's general election. The combination of gerrymandering and the simple fact that many of the state's regions are dominated by one party or the other pretty much guarantees that all but a handful of incumbents will sail through on the November ballot.

I was in Friday's opening-night audience for the Mississippi Bend Players' Dames at Sea. George Haimsohn and Robin Miller wrote the 1966 piece's book and lyrics, with music by Jim Wise, and as Augustana College's Brunner Theatre lobby display notes, it's a spoof of the films Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, and 42nd Street. The old show-biz tropes it sends up are easy targets, and the tunes are imitative (naturally), but vastly enjoyable. As for the script, it's just one giant, cheerful wink in which continuity and plausibility are irrelevant. Show people playing show people putting on a show is a sea of fun to begin with, and the plot merely dips a toe in the water now and then, leaving the singing and dancing to make the big splash – which, here, they do.

There's a British invasion going on at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre, and Friday's performance of The Who's Tommy was in your face, intense, and powerful, a rock opera that cranked up the volume on the phenomenal music of one of the most influential groups of the 20th century: English rock band The Who.

Though they traditionally deliver pre-show entertainment for the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's mainstage productions, the theatre's wait staff of Bootleggers will be “the main course” on the five Thursdays in August when the singing and dancing servers present The Best of the Bootleggers, an August 1 through 29 revue of some of the gifted performers' most memorable pre-show performances from Circa '21's 42 seasons.