From January 21 through 30, the Center for Living Arts, the Penguin Project of the Quad Cities, and Augustana College's theatre department will team up to help turn kids into stage stars for the eagerly awaited family-musical presentation The Little Mermaid Jr. – a production based on Disney's Oscar-winning animated adventure, and a show that boasts a cast composed of talented youths with special needs.

One of the most enduring and harrowing of all classical Greek tragedies, Euripides' Medea serves as Augustana College's first student-directed production of 2022, the title character described, in the New York Times, as “one of the huge, ravenous roles of dramatic literature … it will take everything a performer can give, then ask for more.”

With The Telegraph reviewer Tim Walker stating, “I have seldom, if ever, heard louder or more sustained laughter in a theatre,” the object of that praise – the Tony-winning slapstick farce The Play That Goes Wrong – makes its area debut at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, the show's January 19 through March 12 Rock Island run sure to demonstrate why the New York Times deemed it “a knockabout farce” whose audience “roared as loudly as the crowds at any wrestling match.”

I know the holidays are busy and holiday weekends busier still, but make room in your calendar for this fast-paced, hilarious little show, because it's completely worth it. The energy that director Tristan Tapscott’s cast brought to a very nearly empty house was unbelievable, and I can only imagine what the show would amount to in a packed theatre.