The Quad Cities’ theatre season is beginning to wind down for the year. So it follows that the holiday season must be ramping up, and the final production of Quad City Music Guild’s 76th season, Irving Berlin's White Christmas, is staged with plenty of charm by director Kevin Pieper, offering a pleasant-enough teaser of the tidings to come.

The scenes featuring Savannah Bay Strandin and Stephanie Moeller were particularly engaging highlights of this Dial M for Murder.

K: I immediately thought that the tapes, as a plot device, were inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale. In that book, the heroine’s story is recorded on a series of cassette tapes. But you found a parallel in a different dystopian novel.

M: It reminded me of the mysterious films in Philip K. Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle. But audience members will just have to see for themselves what the tapes are, and what they mean.

The Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Of Mice & Men is a skillful incarnation of this story, and director Justin Raver, alongside his cast and crew, brought it to vivid life in this production – one that's as stark and realistic as Steinbeck's words themselves.