What a magical Saturday afternoon I had at the Timber Lake Playhouse enjoying the company's latest summer production of Into the Woods, a storybook brought to life with fabulous fables and folk tales including those of Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood.

Described by Broadway World as “bursting with show-stopping number after show-stopping number” and by the New York Theatre Guide as “a tap-dancing extravaganza of pure delight,” the exhilarating show-biz salute 42nd Street enjoys a Quad City Music Guild staging at Moline's Prospect Park Auditorium, its July 12 through 21 run demonstrating why this modern stage classic, in its 1980s debut, ran 3,486 Broadway performances and earned Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Choreography.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question.” “Brevity is the soul of wit.” “To thine own self be true.” “The lady doth protest too much.” “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Some of the most famous lines in world-theatre history are set to be heard in Rock Island's Lincoln Park when Genesius Guild presents William Shakespeare's timeless classic Hamlet from July 13 through 21, the company's first staging of this revered Elizabethan tragedy in 18 years.

Directed by acclaimed Broadway veteran Philip Wm. McKinley and written by gifted local playwright Aaron Randolph III, the intense and moving drama A Green River, running July 5 through 14, serves as the second production in the Mississippi Bend Players' military-themed summer season, an exhilarating work described by the River Cities' Reader's Thom White as “not to be missed – not only for being exceptional theatre, but for carrying an important and timely message.”