Based on the beloved Caldecott Honor-winning picture book by six-time Emmy Award winner Mo Willems, Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical will delight family audiences at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse from June 12 through 30, its tuneful score, charming sentiment, hilarious comic adventures, and on-stage puppets resulting in a show that, according to ChicagoTheatreReview.com, “hits it out of the park.”

Nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and the winner of a 1984 Theatre World Award, the delightful musical comedy Baby enjoys a June 14 through 23 staging at Moline's Black Box Theatre, treating patrons to a life-affirming show the New York Times praised for its “buoyancy and charm,” and for “addressing the show's concerns with both humor and intelligence.”

Do a quick Google search and you’ll find innumerable lists of the greatest books of all time. But if you aren’t quite as well read as you’d like, the Spotlight Theatre has a solution for you with their inaugural production of All the Great Books (Abridged).

A legendary comic opera about a single day of madness in a Spanish palace, Mozart's classic The Marriage of Figaro will enjoy rare area performances at St. Ambrose University on June 8 and 10. But the presentation of this romantic, hilarious, and gloriously composed work is rarer still in being a community collaboration between Genesius Guild, Opera @ Augustana, the St. Ambrose music department, and Opera Quad Cities – the latter group making its large-scale public return for the first time this decade.