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 ... .
If you've ever had the desire to catch British comedian Rowan Atkinson on stage, especially as his famed Mr. Bean character, the Timber Lake Playhouse's presentation of The Foreigner may well satisfy your urge - the wizardly Jeremy Day is performing mime-clown routines that Atkinson himself would be happy to steal from.
"The cast hates me," says local performer Andy Davis during a recent rehearsal break. "Our first cast meeting, they were introducing us all and I said, 'Yeah, I'm playing Potter ... ,' and everybody booed."Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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