The Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's production of A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder is likely the most purely entertaining show I've ever seen. Everything exists to delight, laugh at, or marvel over – as long as you can accept murder as entertainment, which humanity has been doing for at least 2,500 years of recorded history.

During Friday’s opening-night performance, Megan Warren’s voice pierced the darkness to begin the Spotlight Theatre’s production of The Spitfire Grill, her immaculate a cappella vocals grabbing the audience’s attention before the music and lights even dared join her. Before her first song “A Ring Around the Moon” ends, you’ll be entranced by Warren’s depiction of Percy, if not for her plight of starting over after being released from prison. then because the folksy music so perfectly suits her voice.

Paraphrasing from the latest presentation at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, “If you need musical medication, the Holiday Inn fills the prescription." And June 7's opening night for this Irving Berlin spectacle was certainly therapeutic, delivering a fantastic, high-energy, fast-paced, never-a-dull-moment performance. With its seasoned dancers and strong vocals, you'll thoroughly enjoy this production. It does not disappoint.

One of Disney's most cherished animated musicals of all time will roar with glorious theatrical life courtesy of Quad City Music Guild, as the enchanted tale of Beauty & the Beast enjoys a June 14 through 23 run at Moline's Prospect Park Auditorium, the Tony Award-winning smash reuniting audiences with beloved characters and songs in a show Variety magazine praised as an “opulent stage musical” boasting “fantastic production values and a memorable score.”

Winner of three 1985 Tony Awards including Best Play, author Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues kicks off the Mississippi Bend Players' military-themed summer season in Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center, the comedy's June 14 through 23 run demonstrating why the Wall Street Journal deemed it “the funniest play on Broadway,” and the New York Times labeled it a “joyous and unexpectedly rewarding” entertainment in which “the laughter rarely stops.”

Described by the New York Post as “an irreverent and funny looks at the intricacies of friendship” and by the New York Daily News as “a fresh-as-a-daisy comedy, funny as can be,” Five Women Wearing the Same Dress serves as the latest presentation in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Barn Owl Series of one-weekend runs, its June 14 through 16 presentation boasting memorable characters and what TheatreWeek deemed “dialogue that ricochets snappily around the stage.”

A swashbuckling, musical tale of romance, humor, and beautifully tongue-twisting lyrics is set to entrance June 14 and 16 audiences at St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center, with Opera Quad Cities presenting, as its annual summertime entertainment, Gilbert & Sullivan's classic operetta The Pirates of Penzance.

Delivering their first 2019 presentation in the form of what is widely considered one of the last plays that William Shakespeare ever wrote, the gifted participants of Genesius Guild will stage the romantic, hilarious, moving, and magical tale of The Tempest in Rock Island's Lincoln Park June 15 through 23, marking the first time in 13 years that the venerable classical-theatre company has produced the Bard's unforgettable 17th Century saga.

Winner of six 2013 Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Score for pop icon Cyndi Lauper in her first outing as a Broadway composer, the high-kicking musical Kinky Boots finds its touring production commanding the stage at Davenport's Adler Theatre on June 19, a work that Entertainment Weekly called “cause for celebration” and that Time Out New York labeled “the very model of a modern major musical.”

Is it a success or a failure when a ghost appears during a séance if you don’t actually believe in the occult? The Richmond Hill Players allow you to decide for yourself with their latest production: a delightful take on the ghostly comedy Blithe Spirit.

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