Featuring only two actors, Marry Me a Little involves The Boy (Thayne Lamb) and The Girl (Sydney Crumbleholme) – upstairs/downstairs apartment neighbors in New York City – and this piece, with no spoken dialogue, is told only through numbers boasting music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Yet even with the songs, the show felt disjointed, and I never truly understood what creators Craig Lucas and Norman René wanted us to take from this collection.

A finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama that also received five 2015 Tony Awards including Best Musical, the critically lauded Broadway hit Fun Home makes its Quad Cities debut at Moline's Black Box Theatre May 30 through June 14, this triumph for composer Jeanine Tesori and book writer and lyricist Lisa Kron hailed by the New York Daily News as an "achingly beautiful" musical that "speaks to one family and all families torn by secrets and lies."

From May 29 through June 8, one of the most endearing and enduring of all dramatic comedies enjoys a run at Geneseo's Richmond Hill Barn Theatre with the venue's presentation of Steel Magnolias, playwright Robert Harling's charming, riotous, and moving tale of mothers, daughters, and best friends that inspired the 1989 movie classic and led Drama-Logue to call it "a skillfully crafted, lovingly evoked picture of eccentricity in the small-town South."

The final production of Augustana College's 2024-25 season is David Auburn's Proof, directed by Jennifer Popple, the college's assistant professor of theatre arts, and this professional-caliber production both impressed and moved me. It's sometimes disturbing, sometimes funny, and although heartbreaking, still left me hopeful.