28 Jun 2005

Comic Subversion on the Showboat: "Ruthless" at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre

By Mike Schulz
Black comedy is tough to pull off, and camp is even tougher, so it's no small praise to say that the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's production of Ruthless is a huge success. This savvy, ballsy musical about a mother-daughter duo who will literally kill to succeed in show biz is so mean and bitchy that it's sure to piss off or offend all the right people, and it's a credit to the comic subversion of the theatre's artistic director, Jay Berkow, that he chose Ruthless as the theatre's Sound of Music follow-up. The show is vicious and borderline inhuman ... and I could barely see my notepad through my tears of laughter.
21 Jun 2005

Genesius Guild's "The Pirates of Penzance" the Right Show for the Right Venue

By Mike Schulz

When you take in a Genesius Guild production at Rock Island's Lincoln Park - when you take in any theatrical performance outdoors - you're at the mercy of the weather, and every once in a while the elements and the production itself will align in a way that feels like perfection.

14 Jun 2005

Quad City Music Guild's "Sugar": Not Quite Wild(er) Enough

By Mike Schulz
If you've seen Some Like It Hot, nothing that happens in the Quad City Music Guild's Sugar will come as a surprise; this 1973 musical-comedy is almost slavishly faithful to the 1959 Billy Wilder film that inspired it. But it does feature a curlicue that makes me giggle: the tap-dancing gangsters.
14 Jun 2005

My Verona's "Closer" a Great Season Opener

By Mike Schulz

Few stage sights are as thrilling as a cast of genuinely hungry actors, especially when they have genuinely meaty material to tear into. My Verona Productions' Closer is a biting, at times painful, piece, yet it's suffused with joy; the actors seem to be relishing the opportunity to verbally claw, scrape, and expose (often self-inflicted) wounds.

14 Jun 2005

Surprise! Clinton's "Sound of Music" Is Full of Surprises

By Mike Schulz
I hate The Sound of Music, but on some level, doesn't everyone? The sugar-coated sensibility, the repetitive songs we know far too well, the Julie Andrews wannabes trilling with relentless cheeriness, the use of Nazis as a pesky, simplistic plot device ... . I know that the show is an assured cash cow for producers, but many of us would be happy for the book and score to disappear until the show's hundredth anniversary in 2059. (I'll be dead by then, right?)
14 Jun 2005

Circa '21's "Oh Mama! No Papa!" Is Fun ... for the Over-70 Set

By Mike Schulz

I've watched numerous comedies at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse over the past decade, and I've never seen one that I thought would be offensive to most 80-year-olds. But until Oh Mama! No Papa!, I'd never seen a comedy that would be offensive to everyone but 80-year-olds.

14 Jun 2005

Ghostlight Continues on the Path to Professionalism

By Jeff Ignatius
Nobody expected Ghostlight Theatre's transition from unpredictable, infrequent troupe to respectable company to be smooth, and it hasn't been. Yet as it approaches the final show of its 2004-5 season - The Will Rogers Follies, running July 21 through 31 at Davenport North High School - Ghostlight can claim a few major accomplishments that count for quite a lot: It's still around, and it's made its budget.
07 Jun 2005

Richmond Hill's "You Can't Take It with You" Is All (Kaufman &) Hart

By Mike Schulz
Moss Hart & George S. Kaufman's 1938 comedy You Can't Take It with You is so sturdy and reliably entertaining that it doesn't take much more than a mediocre version of it to make audiences happy. The current production at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre is significantly better than mediocre - vibrantly played and almost consistently pleasurable - but what's completely surprising is the cleverness and skill behind Vicki Deusinger's staging of it.
31 May 2005

Ballet Effectively Captures Anne Frank's Life

By Administrator
The Diary of Anne Frank is practically synonymous with the Holocaust. For this reason, Alan Ross, executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities, asked Ballet Quad Cities to create a dance based on the book as part of the community project "Beyond the Holocaust: Lessons for Today."
31 May 2005

"People Never Cease to Amuse Me"

By Mike Schulz
"This is a true story," insisted Bill Engvall during a recent phone interview. "I was on a plane, and the flight attendant was asking about people who needed a wheelchair. And she actually said to us, 'If you requested a wheelchair, please walk up front and . .. .'" The comedian laughs. "People never cease to amuse me."

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