After a rough few weeks, I wanted a diversion. So even though I hadn't read the Natalie Babbitt novel on which it's based, I was happy to attend Thursday's final dress and tech rehearsal for Tuck Everlasting at the Spotlight Theatre. I left feeling both impressed and refreshed.

Honesty is the best policy – except, apparently, when it comes to what’s currently playing at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, because Here Lies Jeremy Troy is one heck of a play on words. It turns out that Jeremy Troy – a lawyer seven years into his career, played by Matthew McConville – isn’t dying; he’s lying. But I am being completely honest when I say Thursday’s opening night for director Dana Skiles’ show was full of humor as the characters tried to work themselves out of these lies.

One of the millennium's biggest animated-film hits enjoys a raucous, colorful, and tuneful stage presentation when Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse presents the venue return of Madagascar: A Musical Adventure, a delightful family treat, running June 9 through July 2, reuniting audiences with Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe, Gloria the hip-hip-Hippo, and all of their other Dreamworks favorites.

With its delightful assemblage of songs including “Fins,” “Volcano,” “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” and the iconic "Margaritaville," the Jimmy Buffett celebration Escape to Margaritaville opens the 2022 season at Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse, this uplifting musical stage treat lauded by the Hollywood Reporter as "the theatrical equivalent of sipping on a frozen drink while lying on a beach chair in the blazing sun."