Neil Simon's The Dinner Party, written in 2000 and currently being staged at Black Hawk College, concerns three formerly married couples who meet for a très sophistiqué evening at a Paris restaurant: Claude (played here by Bryan Woods) and Mariette (Elizabeth Cook, alternating performances with Cayla Freeman), whose shared passion for literature outweighed their passion for each other; Andre (Paul Workman) and Gabrielle (Elizabeth Paxton, alternating with Kristen Lynn Raccone), whose sexual rapport wasn't enough to keep Andre faithful; and Albert (Thomas Riley Ratkiewicz) and Yvonne (Kaeleigh Esparza, alternating with Lynn Aaronson), whose obsessive devotion to one another eventually resulted in them getting divorced - twice.
Upon entering the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse for Friday's evening presentation of Church Basement Ladies, I handed my ticket to longtime lobby host Ed Jones, who greeted me with a knock-knock joke (one of his better ones, I must say) and some happy news: The audience for that day's matinée performance included seven busloads of guests making their first-ever treks to the Rock Island venue, with one tour group traveling all the way from Champaign, Illinois, to see the show.
Scott Community College's Who Am I This Time? runs just shy of 45 minutes, and on Saturday evening, I would've been more than happy if the production ended not with a curtain call, but an intermission, followed by a second act in which the cast performed the same show all over again.
I'm sure there are those of you who don't think Mel Brooks' musical comedy The Producers is all that enjoyable, especially if your only acquaintance with the show is 2005's film version. But even if you felt burned by that woebegone adaptation, I urge you to check out Quad City Music Guild's current take on Brooks' modern classic, so you can see just how sublimely hysterical this material can actually be; I'm guessing that the only audiences who could possibly leave director Kevin Pieper's glorious show-biz satire in a bad mood are the easily offended and the abjectly humorless. (And you know who you are, because upon reading that, you instinctively presumed I was referring to you.)
In New Ground Theatre's current production of playwright Julie Marie Myatt's Cowbird, Patti Flaherty is a glorious wreck.
The Harrison Hilltop Theatre's latest presentation is playwright Kathleen Anderson-Curado's La Llorona, and you won't be reading the review I originally set out to write, because after more than 1,000 words of trying, I couldn't find a way to finish it.
Few things are tougher, or more pointless, to explain than the reasoning behind why a joke is funny. I think I've got a topper, though: The reasoning for why a joke isn't funny - at least to you - even though a hundred-plus people are roaring at it.
With the current Much Ado About Nothing, I've now attended 10 presentations by the classical-theatre troupe the Prenzie Players, and perhaps fittingly, it's maybe the most sheerly Prenzie Prenzie production I've yet seen.
There's a special thrill you get from a stage work that seems not just beautifully, but perfectly cast, and following the curtain call for the Green Room's Friday-evening presentation of Doubt: A Parable - currently playing at the Harrison Hilltop Theatre - that thrill stuck with me for the rest of the night, and into the next day.Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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