Director/choreographer Christina Myatt nails the humor and heart of the story in Countryside Community Theatre's Shrek: The Musical, borrowing sparingly from the Broadway show's original directors, Jason Moore and Rob Ashford, without copying their achievement. Myatt's personal mark on the material is most clear in her choreography, especially in the rousing, showy "What's Up, Duloc?", with its Broadway-style kick-lines, and the subtly innocent "I Know It's Today," which involves Princess Fiona at three different ages (played, from youngest to oldest, by Ali Girsch, Emily Baker, and Melissa Anderson Clark). Yet while funny and full of energy, Myatt's Shrek also hits the right notes in its heartfelt moments, during which Myatt's pacing allows some welcome breathing room. And it also doesn't hurt that the musical, with its book by David Lindsay-Abaire and its memorably singable songs by Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori, is a whole lot of fun.

In 2005, Christina Marie Myatt - president of the Countryside Community Theatre's board of directors and owner/artistic director of Davenport's Center Stage Performing Arts Academy - was diagnosed with breast cancer. And not long afterward, as she recalled in our interview, she received a visit from her parents.

"They came out when I was getting ready to go for chemotherapy for the first time," says Myatt, "and my dad said, 'I brought you a gift.' I opened it, and it was his Purple Heart from when he was in Vietnam. And I said, 'Why would you give this to me? I can't take this.' And he said, 'When they hand you this medal, they tell you that this medal is for bravery in the face of an unseen enemy. And watching you, that is what you are doing right now.'"

More than a third of the area productions I attended this year - a whopping 35 of them - I saw in the 91-day span from May 17 to August 15. And more than half of those shows - 19 in all - were produced by a combined five theatre organizations: Rock Island's Genesius Guild, Eldridge's Countryside Community Theatre, the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre (CAST), Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse, and Davenport's newly established Riverbend Theatre Collective. My experiences with this quintet formed a fascinating theatrical journey, one boasting plenty of highs, occasional lows, randomly bitchy Web-site comments ... .

Describing the Countryside Community Theatre's Children of Eden as a first-rate Sunday-school pageant may sound like a backhanded compliment, if not an actual insult. But that's exactly what this presentation of the Stephen Schwartz and John Caird musical feels like, and the description isn't meant to be the least bit insulting.