Hailed by the Chicago Sun-Times as "astonishing" and "a pitch black comedy about the current state of American politics," Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts' The Minutes enjoys its area debut with a November 6 through 14 run at Moline's Black Box Theatre, the Chicago Tribune adding that this "explosive" work "deftly captures the tension of patriotic grandiosity and provincial defensiveness found in city halls across the land."

Hailed by the New York Times as "a breathlessly paced" slapstick boasting "silly vaudeville sketches, word-association games, puns, and crude parodies of movie and television genres," the Reduced Theatre Company's The Complete History of America (abridged) enjoys an October 30 through November 8 run at St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Student Theatre, The Gazette adding that "history has never been this much fun."

One of the millennium's biggest animated-film hits enjoys a raucous, colorful, and tuneful stage presentation when Young Footliters Youth Theatre presents Madagascar: A Musical Adventure Jr. at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts, a delightful family treat, running October 30 through November 1, reuniting audiences with Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe, Gloria the hip-hip-Hippo, and all of their other Dreamworks favorites.

With the British Theatre Guide praising the play for delivering “plenty of moments that are funny, frightening, or exciting,” playwright Jeffrey Hatcher's take on Henry James' classic chiller The Turn of the Screw enjoys an October 23 through November 8 run at Iowa City's Riverside Theatre, the Los Angeles Times hailing the work as “an ingenious twist on an old-school ghost story."