Augustana College’s latest production, directed and choreographed by multi-hyphenate Shelley Cooper, is an area debut and a pleasant surprise. While I knew nothing about Nine before the musical's Tuesday-night dress rehearsal, the show offers a slew of treats for anyone who chooses to attend, regardless of one's familiarity with the material.

Between November 24 and 26, a beloved animated special will come to delightful stage life in Countryside Community Theatre's A Charlie Brown Christmas, an hour-long theatrical entertainment being presented at Davenport's Lincoln Community Center, and one filled with all the memorable characters, crises, and music that made the Emmy-winning TV version a cherished holiday perennial.

With the show boasting, according to the Washington Post, “a momentum and ebullience worthy of the Pixar era,” playwright Ken Ludwig's family-comedy version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas enjoys a run of morning and afternoon performances at Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, this holiday delight's November 30 through December 23 sure to demonstrate why the Post added, “You might think the show itself was a product of Santa’s workshop.”

Hailed by Newsday as “a lusciously written, strangely poignant, dizzyingly modern spin on life,” and by Time Out New York as “utterly spellbinding,” playwright Will Eno's Middletown enjoys a November 30 through December 3 run in Scott Community College's Black Box Theatre, this expansive series of vignettes also lauded by the New York Times as a “delicate, moving, piercing, tart, funny, gorgeous” play that “glimmers from start to finish.”

Praised by Broadway World for "the raw honesty of the emotions" and its "tragic yet inspiring story," playwright Jordi Mand's historical drama Brontë: The World Without makes its United States premiere during a November 30 through December 10 run at Iowa City's Riverside Theatre, the stage work offering fascinating, deeply engaging insight into the lives of not one, not two, but three authors who share a surname.

Director/choreographer Ashley Becher, her performers, and her crew have whipped up one merry and delicious fudging indulgence. You don't need to know the movie to love this show.

At Friday’s performance, the laughs were riotous ones, and while this might not be intellectual humor, funny is funny.

I knew next to nothing about [title of show] before attending Friday’s opening-night performance at St. Ambrose University. I was aware of it in the sense that I knew it was a musical, and I’ve had people tell me I would love it, given that I do so (too?) much theatre. Yet after finally seeing the show for myself, I’d say I left the theatre more entertained than enamored.

If you're one of those folks excitedly looking forward to snow, and this week's forecasted highs in the 60s are bringing you down, you can step into a cold New England night this weekend and bask (sort of) in that chilly atmosphere – plus get a warm, bountiful evening of entertainment – at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre.

A deliciously macabre musical masterpiece that has won 12 Tony Awards between its 1979 Broadway debut and numerous revivals, composer Stephen Sondheim's and Hugh Wheeler's bloody-good Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street closes Quad City Music Guild's 2023 season, its November 10 through 19 run sure to demonstrate why the show is widely considered one of the finest American musicals of the last 50 years.

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