When actor Tommy Bullington walked on-stage for the Timber Lake Playhouse’s opening-night presentation of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, his arrival as narrator Pseudolus was met with a smattering of applause. He acknowledged the greeting and smiled, and the moment the clapping ceased, his smile faded, and Bullington took a perfect micro-pause before saying, “No, I liked it.” Cue the laugh, a bigger ovation, and the star flashing a wide, open-mouthed grin, curtsy-bowing like Maria Callas after performing Tosca at the Met. That, folks, is how you make an entrance.

After July 5's preview performance of On Golden Pond, it could be confidently asserted that Ernest Thompson's 1979 play was shaping up to be a show that Playcrafters Barn Theatre patrons would love.

Enacted by the delightful, gifted quartet of Michelle Blocker-Rosebrough, Melissa Anderson Clark, Sheri Olsen, and Erin Platt, The Marvelous Wonderettes is Countryside Community Theatre’s intentionally minimalist summertime offering after numerous seasons of grandly scaled, extravagantly cast Broadway hits. As it’s better to go small than go bust, I admire the organization’s decision to downsize. Yet if you know nothing about this undemanding musical, I urge you, in the interest of your time, to avoid the synopsis on its Wikipedia page, which details in 1,576 words what can be effectively distilled to 15: "Four young women sing ’50s songs at their prom, then ’60s songs at their reunion."

You know those earworms you get when you can’t get a song out of your head no matter how you try? That happened to me several weeks ago after listening to the soundtrack from the Broadway hit Hamilton. My earworms were so intense that I had difficulty falling asleep, and I would elicit strange looks from people in the grocery aisles as I was unknowingly singing “My Shot” out loud. But the cure was found by my attending Quad City Music Guild’s Into the Woods on July 7, and this brilliant send-up, with its quirky, witty songs, wiped out my old earworms without creating new ones.