11
Aug
2014
If you're planning to see Quad City Music Guild's Oklahoma!, I'd recommend getting to the theatre at least 10 minutes before the presentation begins. Those buying - or hoping to buy - tickets at the door should certainly arrive earlier than that; Friday's opening-night performance was already nearly sold out, and I imagine word-of-mouth will make the musical's second weekend equally jam-packed. But 10 minutes seems like an appropriate amount of time to take in this production's absolute beauty of a set, and besides, you might find yourself forgetting about the set once the cast shows up and gives you even more wonderful things to look at.
I had an utterly fantastic time at Quad City Music Guild's preview performance of The Drowsy Chaperone, director Bob Williams' high-spirited and hysterical presentation of the long-running Broadway hit. Yet I'm embarrassed to say that I may have inadvertently missed 10 of its most entertaining minutes, because I made what was, in retrospect, a terrible mistake: I left the auditorium during intermission.
I'm sure there are those of you who don't think Mel Brooks' musical comedy The Producers is all that enjoyable, especially if your only acquaintance with the show is 2005's film version. But even if you felt burned by that woebegone adaptation, I urge you to check out Quad City Music Guild's current take on Brooks' modern classic, so you can see just how sublimely hysterical this material can actually be; I'm guessing that the only audiences who could possibly leave director Kevin Pieper's glorious show-biz satire in a bad mood are the easily offended and the abjectly humorless. (And you know who you are, because upon reading that, you instinctively presumed I was referring to you.)
