An iconic early project by a three-time Tony Award winner, composer Jason Robert Brown's cabaret-esque musical Songs for a New World enjoys a February 21 and 22 staging at Augustana College by eight student talents of the OperX ensemble, who will bring vocal life to this generational touchstone that led Theatre Mania to write, “Brown's score is filled with soul-stirring melodies, and his lyrics brim with emotion, hope, and soul.”

The Playcrafters Barn Theatre's presentation of The Boxcar Children opened on Friday with a simple, wholesome journey of four Depression-era youngsters and their adventures as recent orphans. Knowing that they will likely go to different foster homes, the Alden children escape into the woods and find a boxcar in which they begin to live, and while the set design was sparse, the actors, for the most part, were excellent – I found myself carefully listening to each character as they expressed their innermost thoughts and feelings. Like the old saying goes, "Less is more," and in this show, I found that to be particularly true.

A hilarious off-Broadway hit for Tony Award winner Julie White, playwright Theresa Rebeck's one-woman comedy Bad Dates enjoys a local staging as the debut presentation by area company One-Off Theatrical Productions, its February 13 through 16 run at Davenport's QC Theatre Workshop sure to prove why the New York Times raved that “Rebeck’s easy control of her craft allows her to overlay this simple comic conceit with a richly detailed character study.”

Based on the beloved series of children's books originally created by author Gertrude Chandler Warner – a series that began in 1924 and boasts well over 150 titles – the family adventure The Boxcar Children serves as the first stage presentation in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's 2020 season, a heartwarming entertainment that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel praised for “the chance to identify and appreciate the strength, and the good, that we're all capable of demonstrating in times of crisis.”