Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in theatre knows that if your first dress rehearsal goes even the least bit well, there's cause for celebration. Having seen the first dress of the Quad City Music Guild's You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown this past Sunday, I can assure the production's participants: There's cause for celebration, because things appeared to go considerably better than "the least bit well."

The comic-strip world of Charles M. Schulz's "Peanuts" characters has long delighted children, and the original, 1967 production of the musical You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown - with its cheerful tunes and hummable score - has long been a staple for young performers, having been consistently produced in high schools, middle schools, and even elementary schools across the country.

At roughly the halfway point of Richard Dresser's two-man comedy Rounding Third - currently playing at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre - Michael (Jim Driscoll), a sweet-tempered assistant Little League coach, asks the team's boisterous head coach, Don (Fred Harris Jr.), if they might enjoy a moment of silence; Michael and Don have shared a continual, often exasperated dialogue over several weeks of team play, and Michael wonders if perhaps quiet would be preferable to jabber. "Oh no," says Don. "We don't know each other well enough to not talk."

New Ground Theatre's presentation of Rebecca Gilman's stalker drama Boy Gets Girl is sensationally entertaining stuff - the most consistently smartly acted and directed work I've yet seen from this organization - and the production becomes all the more impressive when you realize just how easily it could have proven unbearable.