Regarded by many, including New York Times critic Ben Brantley, as potentially the greatest of all American musicals, the legendary, Tony-winning Gypsy enjoys an August 8 through 17 Quad City Music Guild staging at Moline's Prospect Payk Auditorium, the Times' Frank Rich adding that "Gypsy is nothing if not Broadway's own brassy, unlikely answer to King Lear."

Seeing and hearing Countryside Community Theatre's production of Hairspray has nearly stolen my words from me.

Lauded by the New York Times as an "undeniably moving" stage work that "shatters the heart," the immortal tale of horror and hope The Diary of Anne Frank runs at Moline's Playcrafters Barn Theatre August 1 through 10, author Wendy Kesselman's adaptation of Frances Goodrich's and Albert Hackett's Pulitzer Prize-winner hailed by the Associated Press as "a powerful new version that moves the audience to gasps, then tears."

Based on the Oscar-winning modern classic that stands as one of the highest-grossing animated films of all time, Disney's Frozen enjoys an area debut at Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse August 1 through 17, this magical family enchantment a three-time Tony Award nominee hailed by The Guardian for its "theatrical razzmatazz" and "the sense of a real, beating heart in the relationship between the two tortured sisters."