With freshly painted arches and some ghostly trees on the furthest front flats, set designer Miranda Callahan’s work on Medea was interesting enough to generally distract me from the gnats that were apparently immune to insect repellent.

A Tony Award-winning classic that, according to the New York Telegram, "ranks with Dracula and sometimes sets your spine to as much tingling," author Maxwell Anderson's legendary stage chiller Bad Seed enjoys a June 14 through 23 run at Moline's Playcrafters Barn Theatre, this powerfully creepy entertainment the inspiration for an Oscar-nominated movie and a work shortlisted for the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

It must be summer again, because I’m back to making the trek upstate to Timber Lake’s cozy playhouse in the woods. And as directed by Jay Berkow, their 2024 opener, The Nerd, is a crowd-pleasing comedy that features strong performances and solid jokes.

For its season-opening production at Rock Island's Lincoln Park, the Quad Cities' venerated classical-theatre organization Genesius Guild will present the return of Euripides' timeless Greek tragedy Medea from June 8 through 16, the one-act play's director Michael Callahan planning to deliver “an intense 90 minutes that you will, I promise, never forget.”