For its first musical presentation in the venue's first year of operation, the operators of Moline's Spotlight Theatre will take advantage of their venue's locale – the former site of the Scottish Rite Cathedral – with an ideal production for the architecturally grand space: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the lauded stage adaptation of Disney's Oscar-nominated hit running October 5 through 14.

On August 26, theatre, film, and television scribe Neil Simon, at age 91, passed away after a legendary career that found him the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, four Tony Awards, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and more combined Tony and Oscar nominations than any other writer in history. And from October 5 through 7, St. Ambrose University will celebrate the man's extraordinary career with its staging of Rumors, Simon's Tony-winning slapstick farce that the New York Post deemed “light, frothy, and fun.”

Nominated for the 1994 Tony Award for Best Musical and boasting a cast of nearly two dozen musical talents, the Rodgers and Hammerstein revue A Grand Night for Singing will be presented October 6 and 7 as a special fundraiser for Quad City Music Guild and the Prospect Park Pavilion, treating patrons to a song-and-dance showcase in which, according to the New York Times, “the songs flow together in a sequence that treats them as lighthearted extensions of one another.”

Theatre fans who actively seek out new and original works can, on October 6, find four of them at the Village of East Davenport's Village Theatre, where New Ground Theatre will house the venue's latest evening of Sudden Theatre – a 7 p.m. presentation of short plays that literally didn't exist one day prior.

There was a certain air of rowdiness at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's opening-night production of Mama Won't Fly, and rightfully so, as the champagne fountain was flowing in celebration of the theatre's final production of its 41st season. Everyone seemed ready for a good laugh, and on those terms, I don't think any of us left disappointed.

A widely acclaimed work in which, according to Variety magazine, “conflicts explode in consistently intriguing ways,” the comedic drama Speech & Debate serves as the final production in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's 2018 Barn Owl Series, its September 27 through 29 run demonstrating why the Washington Post deemed it a “suspenseful tale that fuses keen-eyed civic critique with riotous and even campy humor.”

Deemed “a beautiful memorial” by Nebraska's The Reader and “an incredible achievement” by Vada magazine, the lauded collection of monologues and show tunes Elegies for Angels, Punks, & Raging Queens enjoys a one-weekend Augustana College staging September 27 through 30 – a deeply moving work that TheatrePizzazz.com called “an unforgettable evening of material real and raw, touching and joyous, and ultimately, celebratory.”

Friday’s opening night of Tuesdays with Morrie found the Playcrafters Barn Theatre housing the largest audience I’ve ever seen there. It was almost unbelievable, then, that the intimacy of this two-man show directed by Jeff Ashcraft made me feel like the only person in the room – and I feel fortunate to have been a part of this production's history.

Having enjoyed a sold-out sensation with its production of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!, the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse wraps up its 2017-18 season, from September 19 through November 3, with another stage hit boasting a mother in the title: Mama Won't Fly, a delightful road-trip comedy by the playwriting team of Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten that Broadway World decreed “moves quickly and never lets up on the laughs.”

With Time Out NY calling the show “Broadway's funniest, splashiest, slap-happiest musical comedy in at least 400 years,” Davenport's Adler Theatre opens its 2018-19 season of Broadway at the Adler performances with the September 22 touring production Something Rotten!, the zany, Tony-winning farce that the Hollywood Reporter called “a big, brash, meta-musical studiously fashioned in the mold of Monty Python's Spamalot.”

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