Events
Adler Theatre and i wireless Center
June through August
Just how built-for-summer are the pop icons and Rock & Roll Hall of Famers known as the Beach Boys? Well, if the band's name alone wasn't enough of a hint, the Beach Boys are so built-for-summer that, in promoting the Grammy winners' July 29 concert at Moline's i wireless Center, I could devote this entire space to their seasonally themed recordings and still have song titles to spare. "All Summer Long." "Surfin' Safari." "Catch a Wave." "Surf's Up." "The Warmth of the Sun." "Surfin' U.S.A." "Summer Means New Love." "Surfer Girl." I could go on and on, but (a) my editor says that's a cheap way to flesh out the article, and (b) that would leave no room here for the summer's other big-ticket events at the i wireless Center and Davenport's Adler Theatre.
On the Davenport side of things, June 11 marks the first of three days devoted to the Adler's Miss Iowa and Miss Iowa's Outstanding Teen Competitions, with 16 young women from across the state competing for the Miss Iowa crown, and nine younger women in contention for the latter title. Actor, singer, dancer, and Bettendorf native Chadwick Vogel will serve as emcee, with 2014 victors and vocalists Aly Olson and Anna Masengarb scheduled to perform, and the Adler will follow that June event with a July show featuring other performers not unfamiliar with competition: Dancing with the Stars Live! Hosted by DwtS veteran (and former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader) Melissa Rycroft, July 25's stage celebration of the TV smash will find professional hoofers Witney Carson, Valentin Chmerkovsky, Artem Chigvintsev, Peta Murgatroyd, and Emma Slater going literally toe to toe against troupe dancers Alan Bersten, Brittany Cherry, Sasha Farber, and Jenna Johnson. Meanwhile, what better way to celebrate the summertime sun shining down than with a summertime Shinedown concert? The multi-platinum-selling, chart-topping rockers will hit the Adler in a special August 7 event, performing from their smash hits Leave a Whisper, Amaryllis, and the band's historic The Sound of Madness, which found all six of its released singles reaching number one on Billboard's charts. Back at the i wireless Center, July 26 brings with it another artist who knows her way around the top of a chart: country-pop sensation Shania Twain. With more than 75 million albums sold, the Canadian chanteuse is not only the best-selling female artist in country-music history, but a multiple Grammy winner and the recipient of her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and will be performing in Moline as part of Twain's first North American tour in more than a decade. If you ask me, that's a pretty outstanding collective summer at the Adler and i wireless, and I didn't even mention the arena spectacle that'll be arriving on my birthday: the evening of cowboys, rodeo clowns, and other fearsome animals composing the June 13 touring event Professional Bull Riders: BlueDef Velocity. The show landing in the area on my special day actually makes perfect sense, considering that I've been called a professional bull rider myself. Or maybe it was "professional bull writer." Hmmm ... . For more on summer events at the Adler and i wireless, visit AdlerTheatre.com and iwirelessCenter.com.
Outdoor Festivals & Events
Davenport
June through August
In checking out the lineup of grandstand acts for this year's Mississippi Valley Fair, taking place August 4 through 9 at Davenport's Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds, I notice that the fair's final concert is an August 9 engagement with country sensations Big & Rich. Which is ironic, of course, because all of this year's guests are big and rich! Prior to those talents, the 2015 fair will deliver grandstand performances by county superstars Kip Moore on August 4 and Reba (that's Ms. McEntire to you) on August 5, Southern-rock stalwarts The Marshall Tucker Band on August 6, chart-topping rockers Styx on August 7, and country-trio extraordinaire The Band Perry on August 7. And if that's somehow still not enough to satisfy your yen for outdoor music this August, LeClaire Park will also be hosting its annual River Roots Live on August 28 and 29, a celebration of roots rock that, with the weekend's accompanying Ribfest, should also satisfy your yen for smoked meats and sauces as hot and satisfying as the summertime sun. But we won't be made to wait until August for Davenport's lineup of festivals and outdoor happenings to commence. June 13 brings with it - quite fittingly, given the event's name - the annual Juneteenth at LeClaire Park, which will commemorate the announcement of slavery's abolition through live music, dance, historical presentations, and children's activities. The following weekend, Davenport's Centennial Park plays host to this year's Rally on the River, the June 18 through 20 celebration of biker culture boasting musicians, vendors, and the annual Scooter Girls competition, which my niece and nephew will be saddened to learn has nothing to do with the Muppets. Those eight- and five-year-olds, however, would love to be in the area for July 4's Red, White, & Boom!, the explosively entertaining fireworks display over the Mississippi River preceded by live music and games just for the little ones. On July 25, downtown Davenport will mark the destination for hundreds of national and international runners competing in the annual Quad-City Times Bix 7 street race, an event taking place between the July 24 and 25 cornucopia of music, food, and family fun that is the 2015 Street Fest. And finally, Davenport wraps up its summertime festival schedule with an event so big that it takes two whole months to present! Well, more specifically, it takes the last two days in July and the first two days in August to present, as July 30 through August 2 are the dates for this year's Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival. With concerts scheduled for Davenport's RiverCenter, Adler Theatre, and LeClaire Park, this annual tribute to the great jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke will feature performances by (at press time) a whopping 18 jazz bands from around the globe, ranging from our own Josh Duffee & the Graystone Monarchs to Austin, Texas' The Thrift Set Orchestra to Orlando, Florida's Bill Allred's Classic Jazz Band to the Hot Jazz Alliance - an ensemble composed of musicians from both the United States and Australia. Meaning that by touring here this July and August, those Australian musicians actually get summer all year 'round. Sne-e-eaky. For more information on Davenport's summertime season of major events, visit DowntownDavenport.com.
Outdoor Festivals & Events
District of Rock Island
June through August
I've just perused this year's schedule of District of Rock Island summertime events, and I'm happy to say that it looks like the lineup is chockablock with events for kids of all ages. Explosions! Mummies! Poison! That's just a few of the ... . Wait! Wait! Come back, kids! It's not as scary as all that! Those explosions, for instance, are going to be safely in the sky during July 4's Red, White, & Boom!, the Independence Day celebration that not only features a glorious fireworks display over the Mississippi River, but all manner of children's activities in Rock Island's Schwiebert Riverfront Park. The mummies may be out to get you, but they're actually out to get you dancing in June 19's District concert with the tightly wound rockers of Here Come the Mummies, performing an outdoor gig with an opening set by 10 of Soul. And the Poison I was referring to was the lead singer of that popular glam-metal band, because Poison frontman Bret Michaels is the showcased performer at this year's Rock the District event on June 20, a night in which musical guests 3 Years Hollow, Girl on Fire, and Eleven Fifty Two will open for Michaels - whom you may also know from his chart-topping solo album Custom Built and his victory in the third season of Celebrity Apprentice. But that's hardly all the fun lined up on Rock Island's summertime docket. From June 10 through 13, the city's Establishment venue will be hosting the ComedySportz World Championships, which will feature not only our homegrown improv talents, but teams of comedians from 23 additional locales, including Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, and even Manchester, England. That Friday and Saturday will also find the District of Rock Island alive with Cajun culture in the annual Gumbo Ya Ya festival, a June 12 and 13 "Mardi Gras in the District" event boasting street vendors, arts and crafts, children's activities, and outdoor concerts by the likes of Amy Nicole & Zydeco Soul, Dikki Du & the Zydeco Crewe, Cha Wa, and other musical talents that don't rhyme as well. Beyond Bret Michaels, glam metal and hard rock will be represented quite nicely in this year's July 11 Daiquiri Factory Anniversary Party, an outdoor fiesta of music and fun featuring a set by the well-coiffed talents of Hairbanger's Ball. The August 14 and 15 weekend brings with it the District's annual Caribbean celebration Ya Maka My Weekend, your go-to destination if you like your music, food, and clothing equally spicy. And on June 26 and 27, the District of Rock Island plays host to the second-annual QC Crossfit, which will find co-ed teams of four vying for thousands of dollars in cash prizes by besting one another in publicly viewable lift, squat, push-up, and pull-up competitions. Having to do push-ups and pull-ups in front of people? Now that you can be scared of. For more information on the District of Rock Island's summertime events, visit RIDistrict.com.
Theatre
Comedies and Dramas
June through August
Among other stage sights, this year's summer season of theatrical comedies and dramas will boast adultery, sickness, assassinations, eye-gouging, accused killers, incest, and numerous sightings of men in drag. Rest assured, though: At the end of the season, there will be peace. Actually, there will be capitalized, italicized Peace, because Genesius Guild's and author Don Wooten's screwball update of Aristophanes' classical-Greek comedy will wrap up 2015's summertime season with outdoor performances August 14 through 16. Prior to that, things will be a lot less Peace-ful in Rock Island's Lincoln Park, as Genesius Guild is also staging the Falstaff-ian Shakespeare romp The Merry Wives of Windsor (June 27 through July 12), the Bard's bloody and bloody awesome "Scottish play" Macbeth (August 1 through 9), and every parent's and child's worst nightmare - Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (July 18 through 26). Going from murder to alleged murder, the District Treatre unveils its new locale at Rock Island's former Argus/Dispatch building with A Few Good Men (June June 26 through July 11), Aaron Sorkin's Tony-nominated "You can't handle the truth!" courtroom drama directed by Lora Adams. Another drama, this one with occasional subtitles, arrives in the form of Davenport's QC Theatre Workshop production of Tribes (June 12 through 28), director Jennifer Popple's take on Nina Raine's moving and funny tale partly performed through American Sign Language. More drama blended with comedy will be on tap in the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's presentation of Robert Harling's beloved, Southern-accented Steel Magnolias (July 23 through August 2), while younger crowds can delight in the Showboat's children's-book staging of Go, Dog, Go! (June 13 through 20). For laughs of a more continental - and grown-up - nature, Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse delivers a Tony-winning treat in the slamming-door slapstick of Marc Camoletti's Boeing-Boeing (July 29 through September 19). And in addition to its current The Boys Next Door (through June 14), Geneseo's Richmond Hill Barn Theatre has a pair of silly and sweet summertime comedies in director John Donald O'Shea's heist-errific The Robin Hood Caper (July 9 through 19) and director Joe DePauw's supernatural romance Down to Earth (August 13 through 23). Meanwhile, one could argue that this summer, Moline's Playcrafters Barn Theatre and Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse have decided that the simplest way to an audience's heart in through its stomach. Laughs will be on Playcrafters' menu when director Jacque Cohoon presents the Jones/Hope/Wooten comedy The Red Velvet Cake War (July 10 through 19). Food, meanwhile, finds it way into the titles of no fewer than three Timber Lake productions, as the summer-stock company's 2015 season makes room for the two-man, cross-dressing riot Greater Tuna (July 16 through 25), the Roald Dahl children's-book adaptation James & the Giant Peach (August 4 through 8), and the family dramedy that is author Dan LeFranc's The Big Meal (June 18 through 27). You could actually make a big meal out of a giant peach, tuna, and red velvet cake, but the war would be with your intestines. For more on the area's summertime stage scene, visit the Reader's online theatre calendar.
Theatre
Musicals
June through August
Almost inarguably, the most famous lyric in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats is the one that begins, "Memory, all alone in the moonlight." Well, this summer, those kitties won't be completely alone, because the Tony-reaping, record-shattering musical sensation Cats is going to be enjoying no fewer than two area stagings: one at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre (June 11 through 21), and one, under the direction of Gregg Neuleib, at Quad City Music Guild's Prospect Park Auditorium in Moline (July 10 through 19). That latter presentation actually comes in the middle of a rather spectacle-heavy summer for Music Guild, which opens with director Michael Turczynski's performers puttin' on the Ritz in the Mel Brooks movie adaptation Young Frankenstein (June 12 through 21), and closes with the magical Disney fun of director Harold Truitt's Mary Poppins (August 7 through 16). And while the Clinton Showboat has grown-up-geared entertainment on tap in the pop revue My Way: A Tribute to Frank Sinatra (June 25 through July 5) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical drama Next to Normal (August 6 through 16), kids are sure to have a ball with the Showboat's four other song-filled offerings: the Tony-nominated storybook delight Seussical (July 9 through 19), and the intern company's presentations of Camp Disney (June 27), Camp Broadway (July 25), and Junie B. Jones: The Musical (July 15 through August 1). In addition to its currently running production of The Sound of Music, Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse has a family musical scheduled with the return of the venue's much-loved children's-book treat How I Became a Pirate (June 20 through July 11), while Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse will have kids floating on air, in a few cases literally, in its musical J.M. Barrie adaptation Peter Pan (July 2 through 12). A beloved TV sitcom will be given stage treatment in the District Theatre's Tony-nominated musical The Addams Family (July 31 through August 16), with portions of a good book - or rather, the Good Book - theatrically re-imagined for Countryside Community Theatre in director Jeff Ashcraft's season-opening production of Jesus Christ Superstar (June 19 through 28). This summer boasts another sure-to-be-inspired collaboration between Genesius Guild and Opera @ Augustana in the comedic operetta of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (June 13 through 21). And there's definitely a big "big" theme happening at Timber Take, because in addition to June's dramedy The Big Meal, the indoor theatre in the woods will offer stagings of the Tony-winning Huckleberry Finn musical Big River (August 13 through 23) and the new stage-musical version of Tim Burton's film fantasy Big Fish (July 30 through August 9) - a show that, incidentally, will also be staged in Eldridge's North Scott High School Auditorium when director Christina Myatt presents Countryside's own take on Big Fish July 10 through 19. That's right: two Big Fish. That's gonna make the two Cats ver-r-r-ry happy. For more on the area's lineup of summertime musicals, visit the Reader's online Theatre calendar.
