One of the most enduring and entertaining stage musicals of all time will be the first of two summer shows presented by Eldridge's Countryside Community Theatre, with the company returning to stage performance for the first time in two years in its June 25 through July 3 run of composer Meredith Willson's classic The Music Man.

The winner of five Tony Awards for its 1973 debut and four Tonys for its 2013 revival, composer Stephen Schwartz's musical-comedy smash Pippin returns Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse to the presentation of live theatre for the first time since 2019, kick-starting the theatre's 60th-anniversary season with a spectacle-driven extravaganza that ran on Broadway for a staggering 1,944 performances and was deemed “a thrilling piece of eye-popping razzle dazzle” by the New York Post.

Returning to the presentation of classical theatre in Rock Island's Lincoln Park for the first time since 2019, the venerated stage company Genesius Guild – which originated in 1957 – opens its 2021 season with the June 19 through 27 run of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (abridged), a 90-minute rendition of the timeless comedy that led River Cities' Reader reviewer Thom White to state, “I ended up laughing harder … than I've ever laughed while watching a Shakespeare performance.”

Davenport Junior Theatre wraps up its 69th season of theatre “for kids, by kids” with the organization's first in-person production in 15 months: the premiere of playwright Aaron Randolph III’s The True Tale of Robin Hood, a funny and exciting outdoor production, running June 11 through 20, that will be free for patrons and held outside on the Great Lawn of the Annie Wittenmyer Complex.