In recent years, 36-year-old actor Dana Moss-Peterson has been asked to play several characters far younger than himself.

During flashback scenes in the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's 2013 Death of a Salesman, Moss-Peterson played Biff Loman when he was a high-school senior and local football hero. For more than half of 2011's Leaving Iowa at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre, his Don Browning was a younger teen enduring an excruciating family vacation. In New Ground Theatre's 2012 Mr. Marmalade, the actor - not in flashback - portrayed Larry, a comically morose, suicidal five-year-old. (It's that kind of play.)

Consequently, it makes a sort of sense when Moss-Peterson says his interest in theatre began when he was even younger than Larry.

Glengarry Glen Ross was my introduction to the writing of David Mamet, with the 1992 film version of his play marking my first exposure to his work. Awestruck, I fell in love with Mamet's vulgar, layered, verbose style, which made it difficult for me to go into St. Ambrose University's new production without high expectations. Fortunately, though, director Corinne Johnson and her cast and crew - particularly set designer Kris Eitrheim - get it mostly right.

The beauty of New Ground Theatre's comedy Things Being What They Are lies in how our hearts gradually soften for Michael Carron's crotchety, imposing Jack, a rudely forward character who pushes his presence onto his neighbor Bill (Matt Moody), and whom playwright Wendy MacLeod uses to explore themes of marriage and mortality.

I'm on record stating that I was "Les Mis-ed out" after seeing three local productions of Les Misérables, and facing a fourth, over a year-and-a-half span. Yet after attending the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's version on Friday, my love for the material is renewed, as director Jerry Jay Cranford's staging adds intimacy while still possessing the grandeur of composers Alain Boublil's and Claude-Michel Schönberg's musical masterpiece.