One of the most significant forces in gospel, pop, and Christian rock takes the Adler Theatre stage on March 16 when Michael W. Smith appears locally in his “Surrounded by a Million Lights World Tour,” sharing the talents that have made the artist an international sensation and recipient of an incredible 45 Dove Awards.

An area jazz great and instructor at the University of Iowa will be the gifted headliner in the latest Polyrhythms Third Sunday Jazz Series concert at Davenport's Redstone Room – a March 18 evening with the Steve Grismore Trio featuring vocalist Grismore on guitar, Danny Oline on bass, Fabio Augustinis on drums, and standards and originals played in the styles of Keith Jarrett, Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, and George Benson.

Because of last year's historic foul-up in the telecast's final minutes, anyone committed to watching Sunday night's 90th Annual Academy Awards really had to commit, agreeing to sit through 230 frequently interminable minutes – you could watch The Post twice in that time! – just to see if Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway would read from the correct envelope. They did. And the evening's climax still felt a little bungled.

Sources in both parties said last week that their tracking polls were showing a dip in support for Senator Daniel Biss and a trending increase for Chris Kennedy in the Democratic primary race for governor.

Talk about an arts destination. I finally visited the Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy for the opening of Bettendorf native (in from Kanas City) Troy Swangstu's animal paintings. His meaty semi-abstract paintings are up through March 9 and are well worth checking out, especially if you are into Basquiat and Bacon, and wish you had gotten to visit the Caves of Lascaux, too.

Although best known for his fast-paced verbal slapsticks, Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning playwright Neil Simon has also exposed a more serious side in such works as Brighton Beach Memoirs, Broadway Bound, and Lost in Yonkers, and Simon's knack for both comedy and drama will be on display in Playcrafters' March 9 through 18 staging of Proposals, a work the Houston Press called “gentle and warm, like a late August breeze ruffling the leaves.”

Hosted by Davenport's River Action and named in honor of Henry W. Farnam, the chief builder of the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad, the Quad Cities' Farnam Dinners are annual tributes to historically signifcant citizens and events, and this year's celebration – taking place at Jumer's Casino & Hotel on March 9 – will salute Illinois' 200th year of statehood, as well as the 200th anniversary of Kaskaskia being named Illinois' very first capital.

A dark comedy of desire, gamesmanship, and shifting power dynamics hits the QC Theatre Workshop when the Davenport venue presents the area debut of the Brodway hit Venus in Fur, a 2011 Tony Award winner that the New York Times called “a seriously smart and very funny stage seminar on the destabilizing nature of sexual desire,” and that Time Out New York lauded as “deliciously twisty and witty fun.”

With the New York Times calling it “the kind of unheralded gem that sends people into the streets babbling and bright-eyed with the desire to spread the word,” author Annie Baker's thoughtful comedy Circle Mirror Transformation will be staged at Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center March 9 through 11 – the annual presentation for which students from the theatre department’s Play production class were responsible for auditioning, casting, directing, scenic design, lighting and sound design, costume design, and stage management.