A powerful stage play inspired by the soul of Marvin Gaye that explores love, music, and the moments that shape us, the world premiere of Funky Soul enjoys a June 26 through 28 run at St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center.

With the New York Times lauding the show as "85 minutes of sweetness, humor, and energetic high spirits," the Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical Seussical continues the summer season at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre July 2 through 12, the musical's recreation of beloved storybook characters and situations brought to life by Tony-winning composers Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty.

A student-performed version of the Broadway classic whose original production earned five Tony Awards (including Best Musical) and the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, The Music Man Jr. enjoys a June 26 through 28 run at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts, the Toung Footliters Youth Theatre presentation treating audiences so such timeless show tunes as “Seventy-Six Trombones, “(Ya Got Trouble,” and “Till There Was You.”

Adam Sanders' production has some of the most intricate, varied, prolonged, high-density, high-energy choreography I’ve yet seen.

There's no point in burying the lede on this: The Timber Lake Playhouse's Les Misérables is the most visually powerful, thunderously well-performed area production I've seen since my first published stage review debuted in 2005, and even since I first arrived in the Quad Cities for college in 1986.

This past Thursday, after a full week of unseasonably hot, muggy weather, we were finally treated to an evening that was cool and breezy. I'm prone to credit the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's Guys & Dolls for the atmospheric shift, because as season-opening presentations go, this one was as cool and breezy as they come.

Because The Shark Is Broken is an insider look at the making of Jaws, it seems both fitting and somewhat ironic that the play and movie share the same villain.

John Glore’s theatrical adaptation preserves the witty, slightly dark sensibility that made the book so beloved by youth and adults alike, and as directed by Jennifer Hoeper, the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's presentation combines adults and children to bring these fractured fairy tales to life.

Magic is on display in Quad City Music Guild's and director Kathryn Weber's current, spirited presentation of 1776, its music direction by Claire Schaecher and choreography by Beth Marsoun. (And I hear the intermission hot dogs are terrific.)

An ancient-Greek classic that has long been translated for stage, cinema, television, and more than a half-dozen full-length operas, Sophocles' Antigone will be staged in Rock Island's Lincoln Park June 20 through 28, Genesius Guild's latest serving as the theatre company's annual presentation largely performed in traditional Greek masks.

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