T Green's and Calvin Vo's production hooked me from the start – the performers are lively, fully present, and engaged in their scenes, and usually moved and spoke naturally, with excellent projection and diction.

A beloved biblical musical boasting seven Tony Award nominations and a chart-topping U.K. single in “Any Dream Will Do,” the Broadway smash Joseph & the Amazing Technical Dreamcoat enjoys a June 26 through July 6 run at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre, this theatrical classic the first-ever publicly staged work by the legendary stage team of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

Courtney Crouse and Tommy Ranieri are both enthusiastic theatre directors who are taking on recent roles as artistic directors of, respectively, our area's summer-stock organizations the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre and the Timber Lake Playhouse. Their passion for the craft and their new summer homes were obvious in recent interviews about the theatres located just 24 miles apart, one on each side of the Mississippi River.

Given that the new Pope hails from Chicago, it’s likely you’ve heard an uptick of talk of that town in the last week or so. But let me tell you: There’s another Chicago you ought to be talking about, because the current production running at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, directed and choreographed by Ashley Becher, is a visual spectacular and features, I wager, some of the best dancing I’ve ever seen on that stage.