Events
Adler Theatre
March through May
Just how big a smash is Jersey Boys? So big that in an Adler Theatre lineup currently boasting 19 springtime events, the Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons musical accounts for nearly half of 'em.
Since 2005, Jersey Boys - scheduled for eight Davenport presentations between April 21 and 26 - has inspired audiences to swoon and croon along to the likes of "Sherry," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," "Big Girls Don't Cry," and more than two dozen additional Four Seasons hits. And this thrilling jukebox revue will also be the rare Broadway at the Adler offering that actually plays in our area while still playing on Broadway, as the four-time Tony winner - currently the 13th-longest-running show of all time - is inching up on its 4,000th performance on the Great White Way. Yet while an eight-show run of Jersey Boys, in most years, would already be enough entertainment for a single season, I'm happy to report that 2015, for the Adler, is not one of those years. The fun begins when the Grammy-winning country artists of Little Big Town land in our own little big town on March 19, while April 2 boasts the re-scheduled performance with the legendary rockers of ZZ Top, and March 24 brings with it an exhilarating, more-than-mildly-psychedelic tribute act in the touring sensation Brit Floyd: The World's Greatest Pink Floyd Show. Jersey Boys isn't the only Tony winner on the springtime docket, as the Broadway at the Adler series continues with March 30's presentation of Peter & the Starcatcher, the wildly imaginative and family-friendly Peter Pan origin story that walked off with five 2012 Tonys. A beloved television personality takes over the Adler stage in March 31's Alton Brown Live!, an evening with the celebrity chef, author, and Good Eats host, with additionally popular TV presences - albeit a cappella ones - vocalizing their hearts out in April 1's touring presentation The Sing-Off Live! Neither TV series, however, is likely as popular with your young uns as Disney Jr.'s Chuggington, so prepare to be pestered for tickets when the Adler brings the animated choo-choo to life in May 12's stage production Chuggington Live: The Great Rescue Adventure. Among more local talents, the gifted hoofers of Ballet Quad Cities bring fairytale magic to the Adler in two April 18 productions of the Tchaikovsky ballet The Sleeping Beauty, with new choreography by Artistic Director Courtney Lyon and live accompaniment by Orchestra Iowa. And speaking of local talents, the Quad City Symphony Orchestra will not only wrap up its 2014-15 Masterworks series with April 11's Peace & Brotherhood Ode to Joy repertoire (performed again at Augustana College's Centennial Hall on April 12), but will deliver an extra-special Adler Theatre treat on May 14. That's the official day celebrating the symphony's astounding centennial, which the musicians will do in the Quad City Symphony Orchestra 100th Season Celebration with Yo-Yo Ma, which features - as the title probably gave away - the extraordinary bowing skills of the legendary Chinese-American cellist. Let's hear it for the Adler ending its season on a high note even Yo-Yo Ma's cello can't hit. For more information on the venue's springtime schedule, visit AdlerTheatre.com.
Music and Movies
The Redstone Room
March through May
Davenport's Redstone Room has a plethora of amazing events lined up in its springtime schedule, but I'm sorry to tell you that you're already late for the March 20 concert with musical legend and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Leon Russell, whose long-awaited area appearance featured an opening set by area music maestro Ellis Kell. Wait, what's that? You're not late? You're reading this hot off the presses in advance of this Friday night? Well ... never mind then! Be sure to catch that Leon Russell concert! You see what all those Reader latecomers miss out on?! If, however, you yourself are one of those latecomers, allow to to say (a) sorry for the joke, nothing personal, and (b) there are still loads of upcoming Redstone Room events to get psyched about! Arizona-based rockers Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers take the River Music Experience's main stage on March 25, while roots rockers The Bros. Landreth trek all the way from Canada for their May 22 Redstone Room engagement. Beating both acts for longest distance traveled, however, are the musicians of Jakubi, who are playing May 20's Summer Camp Music Festival Pre-Party, and schlepping all the way from Melbourne, Australia to do it. (Another Australian, the singer/songwriter Harper, also hits the Redstone Room on April 4, but as he's currently residing in Michigan, it's a much shorter commute.) Among talents based closer to home, the bluegrass rockers of Galesburg's Frank F. Sydney's Western Bandit Volunteers perform their CD-release show on March 28, the Colorado-based funk-fusion outfit Euforquestra (which started in Iowa City) arrives on April 30, Iowa City's Steely Dan tribute act The Fez lands on May 30, and the Quad Cities' own blues sensations The Candymakers headline a high-energy evening on April 24. And so very many more springtime visitors: the Vermont-based DuPont Brothers on March 26; St. Louis reggae artists Aaron Kamm & the One Drops on March 27; pop singer/songwriter Daphne Willis on April 2; folk quartet Darlingside on April 3; pop/folk legend Mason Jennings, making a welcome area return on April 10; the genre-defying Galactic Cowboy Orchestra on April 11; the indie-pop siblings of Shook Twins on April 16; the indie-rock sextet Kopecky on April 17; chart-topping alt-country artist Todd Snider on April 22; the jazzy Chicago band Family Groove Company on April 25; folk legend Chicago Farmer with his 998th(!) show on May 1; a CD-release party with folk rockers The Ballroom Thieves on May 9 ... . All this Redstone Room entertainment plus screenings of musically themed films in the "Redstone Reels" series, with the documentaries Thunder Soul and Sound City on March 24, the concert film Umphrey McGee's Live on April 24, and the cult comedy Empire Records on April 8. You know that latter title has its musical bona fides, because it features Liv Tyler, Renee Zellweger, and Maxwell Caulfield - a.k.a. the daughter of Aerosmith's frontman, the female lead in Chicago, and the male lead in Grease 2. (Stop giggling. "Cool Rider" and "Reproduction" are insanely catchy.) For more information on the Redstone Room's springtime lineup, visit RiverMusicExperience.org.
Events
Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse & Circa '21 Speakeasy
March through June
As I've repeated ad nauseam in these pages, I spent 11 years, from 1994 to 2005, as an employee very happily included on the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse payroll. Though you might suspect otherwise, I am no longer on the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse payroll. But I swear, I wouldn't keep featuring the venue in these quarterly articles if the theatre, and its sister venue the Circa '21 Speakeasy, didn't keep giving me so many reasons to. Seriously, if there had been this many goings-on back when I was an employee, I likely would've quit from exhaustion and high-tailed my lazy ass across the river to work full-time for an independent newspa- . Moving right along. There are, of course, a number of theatrical offerings taking place at the Rock Island venue over the next three months, with Circa '21's musical entertainment including the comedy sequel The Church Basement Ladies in: The Last (Potluck) Supper (March 25 through May 16), the children's book adaptation Fancy Nancy: The Musical (April 14 through May 15), and Rodgers & Hammerstein' legendary The Sound of Music (May 20 through July 25). You also have until March 21 to catch the main-stage production of Les Misérables ... and trust me, you should. Yet the playhouse and its conjoined, if smaller, twin venue are about far more than plays this spring. Stand-up comedy, for instance, will be in abundance on March 28, when the Speakeasy houses the #soblessed Comedy Show, with Andrew King hosting a night with headliner Christopher Schlichting and comedians Jim Petersen and Bobby Ray Bunch, the latter of whom emcees his own evening in May 30's Bobby Ray Bunch's Standup Comedy Showcase. More stand-up is on the springtime docket in March 20's and May 15's The Speakeasy Laugh Hard and the dueling-comics event Standup Face-Off on May 23, while My Verona Productions debuts a "Saturday Night Live for the Quad Cities" in the April 4 and 11 performances of Rock City Live, with a new version of the production scheduled for May 9 and 16. The popular artists of Bottom's Up Quad City Burlesque strike back with their new "Fairy Tales" presentation, running Fridays and Saturdays April 17 through 25. Beloved songs of the past will be delivered with glorious immediacy when performer Robert Shaw stars in the Circa '21 concert event Dream Lover: A Salute to Bobby Darin on April 23 and 24, while different tunes from a similar era are on hand in the annual performances by pop icons The Lettermen, playing two shows on May 11. And a master of prestidigitation takes over the Speakeasy on May 2 in the interactive, family-friendly presentation The Magic of David Casas. There are actually even more springtime Circa '21 and Speakeasy events worth bringing up - '40s-era hits with The Manny Lopez Big Band on April 10 and May 8, award-winning performers in the Viva La Divas Drag Shows on April 3, May 1, and June 5 - but I could only discuss them in full if David Casas found a magical way to make my word count disappear. For more information on Circa '21's springtime schedule, visit Circa21.com.
Theatre
Comedies & Dramas
March through June
God of Carnage. Beyond Therapy. Housebroken. All phrases used to describe me. But also the titles of three theatrical productions hitting the area this spring, a season positively overflowing with dramas, comedies, debuting works, Tony-winning smashes, more than two dozen different Shakespeare titles ... . Think I'm kidding about that last one? Then you apparently haven't seen the Bard-tastic theatrical and literary spoof The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [abridged] ... though you certainly can when director Tom Morrow stages this delightful slapstick at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre April 9 through 19. More-traditional Shakespeare, however, will also be on hand when Augustana College, director Jennifer Popple, and her student-actor cast deliver the classical-theatre comedy As You Like It (May 1 through 10), a production that, ironically enough, opens the very same day as Shakespeare's dramatic Antony & Cleopatra (May 1 through 9), the Julius Caesar follow-up that director Kate Farence will stage for the Prenzie Players at the QC Theatre Workshop. Under Lora Adams' direction, the Workshop itself will produce Nora and Delia's Ephron's all-female comedy Love, Lies, & What I Wore (May 15 through 17), with proceeds split between the company and Dress for Success Quad Cities, while another all-female comedy lands in director Alexis Chamow's Riverside Theatre world premiere Housebroken (April 10 through 26), starring author/performer Megan Gogerty and ... that's it! Among the season's prize-winners, Pulitzer Prize champ Driving Miss Daisy (May 8 through 17) enjoys a Playcrafters Barn Theatre staging by director Donna Weeks; Scott Community College's Kevin Babbitt directs the nasty dark comedy of the Tony Award-winning Best Play God of Carnage (April 10 through 18); and the Adler Theatre hosts the Peter Pan origin saga Peter & the Starcatcher in a March 30 Broadway at the Adler presentation. Director Christina Myatt tackles a new-to-the-area modern comedy in New Ground Theatre's The Way West (May 15 through 24), with a bunch of works new to any area receiving stage treatment in Augustana's annual Quad Cities Playwright Festival (May 15). Across the river, St. Ambrose University officially opens the spring-theatre season with Robert Poston's student-directed take on Christopher Durang's hysterical Beyond Therapy (March 19 through 21), while professor Daniel Rairdin-Hale lends his considerable experience in, and gifts for, stage movement to the classical-theatre event An Evening of Commedia del Arte (April 17 through 19). And as we began with the venue, we may as well close with it, because the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre also has another show on its springtime roster in director John VanDeWoestyne's production of the lovely comedy/drama The Boys Next Door (June 4 through 14). Hey! I've been described as "the boy next door," too! But only by my next-door neighbors. For more information on our area's lineup of spring plays both local and in surrounding areas, visit the Reader's online theatre calendar.
Theatre
Musicals
March through June
Our springtime musical and dance-event season opens with Into the Woods, one of my absolute favorite shows of the past 50 years, and ends with Ballet Quad Cities' Ballet Under the Stars, being performed by a professional dance company that I will forever be unapologetically and deservedly biased toward. Consider those shows, then, the cookies in the incredibly tasty springtime Oreo that is the area-theatre musical and dance scene - one that might boast more recognizable and beloved titles than any such season in recent memory. With five Tony Awards to its name, plus three recent Oscar nominations for its film version, Stephen Sondheim's fairytale classic Into the Woods is certainly adored by many beyond me, and the reasons why will be in evidence during the show's run at the First Presbyterian Church of Davenport March 21 and 22. Ballet Under the Stars, meanwhile, will enjoy its annual Lincoln Park stagings June 5 through 7, just a few weeks after the company's Adler Theatre productions of another springtime fairytale - The Sleeping Beauty, with matinée and evening performances held on April 18. Davenport's Adler will also host eight productions of the Tony-dominating Four Seasons revue Jersey Boys (April 21 through 26), while elsewhere in the city, students at Davenport Junior Theatre take on a debuting musical in composer Aaron Randolph III's adaptation Rumpelstiltskin, running May 2 through 10. (So many fairytales this spring, so little time!) Additional student talent will be on display in two musical classics being staged at Rock Island's Center for Living Arts - Leonard Bernstein's thrilling Romeo & Juliet homage West Side Story (April 24 through 26) and Andrew Lloyd Webber's eternally popular biblical pastiche Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (May 1 through 9) - with the Center also teaming up with Two Rivers United Methodist Church for a new staging, at the Rock Island church, of Stephen Schwartz's New Testament-inspired Godspell (March 29). The District Theatre brings a cult screen comedy to life in its springtime presentations of High Fidelity: The Musical (April April 23 through May 3), while the District's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse has a trio of sure-to-be-hit musicals on the seasonal docket: The Church Basement Ladies in: The Last (Potluck) Supper (March 25 through May 16), Fancy Nancy: The Musical (April 14 through May 15), and Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music (May 20 through July 25). Summer theatre officially starts in spring with the Timber Lake Playhouse's season-opening production of the Broadway smash Hairspray (June 4 through 14). Meanwhile, a Quad City Music Guild calendar year that boasts, quite frankly, a wildly intimidating lineup of big-ticket musicals kicks off with one of the 21st Century's most hysterical ones: the Tony-winning "pay for the privilege to pee" spectacle Urinetown: The Musical (March 26 through 29). And if I don't wrap this up soon and take a long-overdue break from the computer, Urinetown is exactly where I'm gonna be, too, so obtain more information on this spring's season of musicals by visiting the Reader's online theatre calendar.
Also visit "What's Happenin': Thursday, March 19, through Wednesday, April 1."
