Praised by DC Theater Arts as "a genuine joy to watch," the family entertainment Junie B. Jones: The Musical opens the 2024 season at Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse with a 10-performance run from May 7 through 11, the outlet adding that the characters in this Barbara Park adaptation "say the silliest things and die on the hills of the most meaningless opinions, and in doing so, bring genuine belly laughs to the adults in the room."

A trio of chilling, humorous, and entirely surprising tales by history's master mystery writer will be told at Moline's Black Box Theatre when the venue houses its latest series of live "radio" plays, the April 26 through May 4 production of Murder in the Studio treating audiences to three mesmerizing works by the legendary Agatha Christie.

Director Aaron Baker-Loo created a memorable musical production – though, admittedly, I found the whole saga more depressing than I remembered. Luckily for the Spotlight, their presentation is also an enchanting spectacle that is more than enough to keep even the youngest viewer interested.

With Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman's play lauded by the Los Angeles Times as a work "that ratchets the suspense to Hitchcockian heights," the fairytale-themed thriller The Secret in the Wings enjoys its area-debut staging in St. Ambrose University's Studio Theatre from April 12 through 21, this exciting, unsettling stage piece inspiring the Chicago Reader to state, "It's tasteful and smart, and it respects the mystery at the heart of the tales it tells."