Quad City Music Guild's Cabaret is at its most entertaining whenever Bryan Tank's Emcee graces the stage - "graces" being a somewhat incorrect term, as it's the actor's unflinching commitment to his character's blatantly sexual nature that's so engaging. With his impressive German accent and convincing characterization of unabashed debauchery, Tank punctuates the beguilement of his Emcee by way of sexual gestures that seemed to titillate Thursday's preview-performance audience, at least judging by the large amounts of laughter mixed with amused shock. (This was most notable during the threesome pelvic thrusts and other dance steps in Cabaret's "Two Ladies" number, one of several deliciously bawdy pieces choreographed by Emma Williams.)

If you weren't able to get tickets for the Green Room's weekend presentations of Assassins, I'm guessing you weren't alone, as all three performances wound up selling out. But over the next two weekends, I urge you to try again - there are scenes in director Derek Bertelsen's production that are so good they'll give you the chills. And the scenes that don't? They're pretty amazing, too.

As the title character in the Quad City Music Guild's presentation of George M!, Kevin Pieper works his tail off. His Broadway impresario George Cohan belts out number after number, he tap dances, he storms through scenes with natural authority; in this musical-comedy biography, the role of Cohan is practically a show unto himself, and the energy that Pieper gives the part is admirable.

More often than not, though, it's energy in a void, because with precious few exceptions, the George M! ensemble isn't giving anything back. At any given time, there are up to 44 performers sharing the stage with Pieper, yet it takes little more than one hand to count the number of them who look pleased to be there. Thursday's preview performance, at least, showed Pieper having to work both the audience and the cast, and that's more responsibility than any single performer should be burdened with.