The joint was really jumping at the Timber Lake Playhouse on Friday as the company presented its rendition of Ain’t Misbehavin', an energetic tribute to the songs of Thomas “Fats” Waller.

A tribute to the compositions of jazz legend Fats Waller that received three Tony Awards including Best Musical, the musical revue Ain't Misbehavin' enjoys an August 19 through 29 engagement at Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse, this exhilarating collection of classic songs described by the New York Times as a show that "moves with the zing and sparkle of a Waller recording filled with bright melodies and asides.”

Any time you have the chance to catch a brand-new script in performance, it’s bound to be interesting. Local playwright Jim Sederquist kicked us back to 2013 with his new dramedy The Whistleblower’s Dilemma, and, under the direction of Mike Turczynski, Saturday’s presentation at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre definitely lived up to “interesting.”

Described by the Windy City Times as “an archly manipulative psycho-thriller” that “holds your attention like a leash,” author Douglas Post's fiendishly witty thriller Murder in Green Meadows enjoys an August 19 through 28 run at Moline's Black Box Theatre, the show a recipient of six Emmy nominations when performed on television by Chicago's legendary Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

When I sat down for Saturday's presentation of Outside Mullingar, I was already impressed by the high quality of the performers' credits, along with the large quantity of shows each has done. I was soon to be dazzled.

I attended Quad City Music Guild's Thursday preview of Matilda: The Musical, and as I'd never before seen the 2010 show, hadn't seen the 1996 movie, and hadn't read the 1988 Roald Dahl book it's based on, I obviously came very late to this party – and it's a huge party.

Does everything that happens to us happen by chance? Or could our reactions to life’s events change their outcomes in small or large ways? (I've heard it said before that what might break one person may actually strengthen another, and although we cannot control outside events or circumstances, we can choose how we react.) These thought-provoking questions came to mind as I finished watching Sunday’s matinée performance of playwright Nick Payne’s Constellations, now playing at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre.

It was a lovely summer evening at the Timber Lake Playhouse on Friday night, with glowing stringed lights hanging throughout the campground that added a tranquil feeling outside. Inside the theatre, it was equally pleasant, with the welcoming, rustic set design by Sherri Howells providing a fabulous, bluegrass-and-country playing area for the venue's latest musical presentation The Robber Bridegroom.

From August 13 through 22, the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's 2021 Barn Owl Series that began with the venue's June debut of Princeton's Rage continues with another world premiere: The Whistleblower's Dilemma, a dramatic comedy of chicanery, guile, and yoga written by Bettendorf playwright Jim Sederquist.

With the second of its two summertime Shakespeare productions held in Iowa City's Lower City Park, Riverside Theatre delivers one of the Bard's freshest and funniest titles in its August 13 through 22 staging of The Comedy of Errors – a work that esteemed literary critic Harold Bloom said “reveals Shakespeare's magnificence at the art of comedy” and demonstrated “mastery in action, incipient character, and stagecraft.”

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