K: Taking pleasure in the ridiculous is key to making this show work, and Zach Ulmer was clearly having a great time. The audience couldn’t help but follow suit!

M: Absolutely. I’d agree that Ulmer was the highlight of the show’s comedy, including some fun ad-libbed asides – and he has a strong singing voice, to boot.

One of few musicals in history to win Tonys, a Grammy, and the Academy Award for Best Picture, the legendary Chicago makes its long-awaited debut at Rock island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse with its May 7 through July 5 run, this second-longest-running show in Broadway history a smash with both audiences and critics, the New York Times stating, "It has theatrical muscle, the characters are vivid, and its issues are ongoing in our public discourse."

Hailed by the Des Moines Register as a "punchy comedy" with a "tightly coiled script," the zany farce Girls' Weekend makes its Quad Cities debut at Moline's Playcrafters Barn Theatre May 2 through 11, this comic delight the first full-length published play written by Des Moines native Karen Schaeffer.

Hailed by Variety as a “wonderfully funny” and “ambitiously constructed work,” and by the New York Observer as “unshowily fresh and humane,” playwright David Auburn's Proof closes the 2024-25 theatre season at Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center, this Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner also lauded by the New York Daily News as a “smart and compassionate play of ideas.”

From April 26 through May 4, high-flying fun will be on hand when the student talents of Davenport Junior Theatre present a brand-new take on J.M. Barrie's classic Peter Pan, an extraordinary tale of excitement and adventure written specifically for the Quad Cities company by Junior Theatre alum and St. Ambrose University graduate Brooke Galván.

Based on an unfinished Charles Dickens novel and the winner of five 1985 Tony Awards including Best Musical, The Mystery of Edwin Drood enjoys a City Circle Theatre Company presentation at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts May 2 through 11, the critically lauded smash famed for being the first Broadway musical to be presented with multiple endings, the finales for each performance determined by audience vote.

In our recent phone chat about the new Haus of Ruckus play, it takes Calvin Vo more than a half-hour to drop a bomb that probably should've been dropped in the first five minutes: “We're thinking, with the format we have now, this might be the last time we write Johnny and Fungus.”

Ummm … what?!

One of the most ticklish and tuneful operettas in theatrical history enjoys an April 25 through May 24 run at Davenport's St. Ambrose University with the theatre department's staging of The Pirates of Penzance, the beloved Gilbert & Sullivan masterpiece whose 1981 Broadway production won the Tony Award for Best Revival and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical.

A glorious stage fairytale boasting a legendary score and a reimagined script by Douglas Carter Beane, the Tony-winning Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella will be presented at Davenport's Adler Theatre on April 19, this beloved classic and Breath of Encouragement production an entertainment, according to the Associated Press, that "crackles with sweetness and freshness, combining a little Monty Python's Spamalot with some Les Misérables."

Deemed "an excellent and compelling play" by the New York Post and "brilliant, powerful, and cinematic" by the Associated Press, Tony Award winner John Logan's dramatic thriller Never the Sinner enjoys an April 24 through 27 staging by the theatre talents at Scott Community College, this tale of the infamous Leopold & Loeb killing hailed by the New Yorker as a work that "sweeps the audience into the boys' friendship without losing sight of the brutal murder."

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