My kids grew up on Disney's Beauty & the Beast. I've seen the animated movies and TV specials. I've tripped over toys. I have faded photos of my daughter dressed in a brilliant ballroom gown. I've listened to Alan Menken’s soundtrack (with lyrics by Tim Rice and Howard Ashman) hundreds of times, seen the story performed on ice, and watched the live-action film earlier this year. But I’d never seen the Broadway-musical adaptation, and now that the Timber Lake Playhouse has opened its extravagant version of this classic tale, I can cross the live version off of my theatrical bucket list, too.

If you ask anyone at the Statehouse about House Speaker Michael Madigan’s former chief of staff Tim Mapes, they'll all say he "made the trains run on time.”

Based on the beloved Caldecott Honor-winning picture book by six-time Emmy Award winner Mo Willems, Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical will delight family audiences at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse from June 12 through 30, its tuneful score, charming sentiment, hilarious comic adventures, and on-stage puppets resulting in a show that, according to ChicagoTheatreReview.com, “hits it out of the park.”

Praised by JazzPolice.com for her “big, soulful voice,” and with 20-year David Sanborn collaborator Ricky Peterson insisting, “She will knock you out,” Minnesota-based jazz singer Pippi Ardennia performs as a June 17 guest in Polyrhythms' Third Sunday Jazz Workshop & Matinée Series, with her partner for the event Daniel Leahy, the noted jazz pianist who is currently writing and recording new compositions for the artist.

Now celebrating its 34th year as a Father's Day institution, River Action's June 17 Ride the River event invites participants to explore the wilds of four Quad Cities islands on a bi-state tour along riverfront bicycle trails, with special events, giveaways, and more taking place at numerous stops along the journey.

Nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and the winner of a 1984 Theatre World Award, the delightful musical comedy Baby enjoys a June 14 through 23 staging at Moline's Black Box Theatre, treating patrons to a life-affirming show the New York Times praised for its “buoyancy and charm,” and for “addressing the show's concerns with both humor and intelligence.”

A 2003 inductee in the Iowa Blues Hall of Fame, acclaimed blues vocalist and Quad Cities native Ernie Peniston reunites his Ernie Peniston Band for a special Redstone Room concert on June 21, an evening that finds the artist sharing the soulful talents that led Blues Blast Magazine to state, “Peniston is a singer with a magnificent voice, capable of handing a wide range of styles with aplomb and always with full-bore emotional commitment.”

Marijuana is an “unspeakable scourge,” warns The Lecturer (played by an augmentedly-bearded Andy Curtiss) at the start of the QC Theatre Workshop's hilarious production of Reefer Madness. A scourge, warns the man, that's “turning all our children into hooligans and whores!”

There’s a big reunion in Geneseo! To celebrate the 50th-anniversary season of the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, director John VanDeWoestyne got some of the 2008 Dearly Beloved gang back together for this summer’s sweetly nostalgic revival. The theatre’s audience voted to add the show to the season, and, along with over half the original production’s actors returning, the plot features its own reunion in the form of a family wedding. Dearly Beloved must have been remembered fondly because Thursday night’s opening was packed.