A year-and-a-half after enjoying his performance in New Ground Theatre's The Beauty Queen of Leenane, I am glad to see David Turley on a Quad Cities stage again in the company's Next Fall. It was Turley's portrayals of John Hinckley in the Green Room Theatre's 2008 Assassins and William Barfee in the Harrison Hilltop Theatre's 2010 The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee that initially endeared me to his comedic deliveries. And I'm grateful to see him employ his skills as this new play's 40-year-old gay atheist Adam, a character performed with more subtlety than those aforementioned roles, but one that still employs Turley's amusing brand of dry, sarcastic, slightly dark humor.

"I think Playcrafters has traditionally had the reputation of being a stodgy old theatre that only does six comedies a year," says Tom Morrow, a frequent actor and director for Moline's venerable Barn Theatre. "And admittedly, we do a lot of comedies. But every once in a while, we try to stick our necks out and do something else."

That they do. In addition to the titles produced in conjunction with Playcrafters' 2009 "Diversity Initiative" - Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and August Wilson's Fences - other recent "something else"s have included 2005's Altar Call, a debuting, religiously themed drama written by local playwright Melissa McBain, and 2008's Promises, Promises, one of only a handful of musicals the theatre has produced during its 81-year history.

And on September 10, the Playcrafters Barn Theatre will actually present something of a blend of these latter two works - a debuting, religiously themed musical - when it premieres Hard to Believe, a song-filled re-telling of the Biblical story of Job, directed by Morrow, and written and composed by Tim Stoller and Jonathan Turner. Previously staged, in workshop form, at Rock Island's defunct Green Room Theatre in 2008 and Davenport's Zion Lutheran Church in 2009, Turner says that "the whole theme of the show is about the challenges of faith, and maintaining your faith in the face of all this tragedy."

As the show's many, many stagings have taught us, so long as you have a great Maria, a good Captain von Trapp, and a bunch of cute kids, you can present even a really mediocre The Sound of Music and get away with it. And I'm happy to report that the Countryside Community Theatre's presentation of Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical has a great Maria, a good Captain von Trapp, and a bunch of cute kids. As for the rest of the production ... well, they're getting away with it.

In his recent roles at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre, Patrick Adamson - portraying the insistent houseguest from hell in 2005's The Nerd and the irresponsible, romantic Gordon in the current Catfish Moon - has displayed an almost fearsome amount of talent.