This spring, the student talents of Augustana College's OperX ensemble will treat audiences to alternating performances of both a full one-act opera and excerpts from the operatic repertoire, with the gifted singers and director Patrick McNally staging composer Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl & the Night Visitors on April 21 and 23, and works by Mozart, Gilbert & Sullivan, Bizet, Monteverdi, and more in the vocal revue Stolen Scenes on April 20 and 22.

Lauded by CurtainUp as "a masterful study of the human soul," Sholem Asch's acclaimed and incendiary 1906 drama God of Vengeance enjoys a student-produced run at Augustana College from April 27 through 30, this Jewish masterwork described by Broadway World as "full of complex characters whose motives invite debate."

A timeless Broadway sensation whose film version won six Academy Awards including Best Picture, the Charles Dickens adaptation Oliver! enjoys an April 14 through 23 run at Moline's Spotlight Theatre, this Tony-winning family spectacle noted for playing in New York for more than two years and its original London run lasting a then-record-breaking 2,618 performances.

With the Geneseo venue's 2023 season opener lauded by Talkin' Broadway as “a fast-paced, quick-witted, an funny comedy with a bright, happy ending,” the stage sequel Drinking Habits 2: Caught in the Act will be staged at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre April 20 through 30, this wacky slapstick a continuation to the terrifically popular Drinking Habits that made its area premiere last spring.

With its brisk pace, lean hour-and-10-minute duration, lack of intermission, and lively, accomplished cast, this show is so tasty you won't even think about food.

With the New York Daily News calling the play "lunatic fun that keeps you in stitches" and the Village Voice hailing it as a "hearty mixture of thrills, laughter and extravagant showmanship," author Charles Ludlum's stage sensation The Mystery of Irma Vep makes its long-awaited area debut at Moline's Black Box Theatre April 13 through 22, the New York Post having added, "The story has to be seen to be believed."

Lauded by the LA Review as "an eerie excursion into the surreal and the supernatural," the seven short works that constitute Very Still & Hard to See (A Short Play Cycle) will be presented at Bettendorf's Scott Community College from April 13 to 16, their author Steve Yockey a producer and writer for TV's Supernatural who received two Emmy nominations for the HBO comedy series The Flight Attendant.

I’ll be honest: The crazy, early-spring, heavy snowstorm that knocked out power to my house earlier in my Saturday soured my mood, and I was not really looking forward to going out to see playwright Bradley Robert Jensen's Anywhere But Here. This, though, made it all the better that this workshop production turned out to be such a gem – Jensen's slice-of-life piece is heartfelt and laugh-out-loud funny while still broaching some heady topics.

The performers at Sunday's performance of director Curt Wollan's production shined, as they most always do at this theatre, and the jokes – most of them innuendos and phallic allusions – were actually pretty funny, and delivered well.

Described by the New York Times as "effervescent and entertaining," and by Online America as an all-ages show that delivered "fresh bursts of energy," Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse opens its 2023 season of high-spirited family musicals with Junie B.'s Essential Survival Guide to School, an adaptation of Barbara Park's beloved children's-book series about the riotous and winning young Junie B. Jones.

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