27
May
2014
A Depression-era band performs an impromptu concert at a small-town theatre, facing off against an overbearing, somewhat inept police officer who later, after getting plastered, takes a shine to them. The group's biggest adversary is a mean-spirited rich woman who, after boo-worthy attacks on the group, gets her comeuppance when her power is pulled out from under her. The story serves as the bridge to performances of early-20th-Century songs performed by this jukebox musical's cast members, who play on string instruments and out-of-the-ordinary percussion sources.
It's a description that fits both Southern Crossroads and the District Theatre's latest debuting production, Big Rock Candy Mountain.
On Saturday evening, I was reminded of the local treasure that is the District Theatre's A Christmas Carol. Written by Tristan Layne Tapscott with music by Danny White, this holiday musical is something special: a locally created piece so good that it could, and should, be staged by theatres throughout the country. And this year - the second the theatre has produced the show - brings some notable changes from last winter's staging of this theatrical gem.
The current production of the musical revue Songs for a New World features a winning, frequently exemplary quartet and some excellent design ... and, in all honesty, I doubt I'd have enjoyed this Green Room Theatre presentation nearly as much as I did had it actually been performed at the Green Room Theatre.
In Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, the storytelling and language are already so musical that the decision to adapt the author's tale into a musical seems a little redundant. But as redundancies go, the musical version of Little Women is actually pretty good, and under the direction of Bob Williams, Quad City Music Guild's take on the show is pretty damned good - marvelously designed, staged, sung, and (apart from two glaringly inappropriate performances) acted. Alcott purists may gripe, and not without cause, but it'd be hard to gripe about Music Guild's presentation of the material, and, I think, impossible to gripe about the portrayal of Erin O'Shea, whose stunningly radiant turn as Jo March seems reason enough for the existence of a Little Women musical.
