Michael Schmidt, Emily Baker, and Eric Reyes in SeussicalOn Thursday night, I attended Quad City Music Guild's preview performance of Seussical, and if you include St. Ambrose University's 2008 production of the one-act Seussical Jr. - and I most certainly do - it was the third time I'd seen this show in as many years. (Eldridge's Countryside Community Theatre produced its version in the summer of 2007.) If theatres would only oblige, I'm reasonably sure I could see it, and without any complaint, every year for the rest of my life.

Nicholas Charles Waldbusser, Ryan Mosher-Ohr, Ryan Anderson, Angela Rathman, and Kevin Maynard in The Last Mass at St. Casimir'sOver my many years of theatre-going, there isn't a stage trilogy I've enjoyed quite the way I've enjoyed the Pazinski-family comedies of author Tom Dudzick, a trio of lightly philosophical, understatedly touching, devastatingly funny plays that began with 1994's Over the Tavern and continued with 1998's King o' the Moon.

And I don't think I've ever loved a stage production quite the way I love the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's current The Last Mass at St. Casimir's, the climactic chapter (written in 2002) not only in Dudzick's trilogy, but in Richmond Hill's, as Geneseo's Barn Theatre produced Over the Tavern in the summer of 2005, and King o' the Moon in the summer of 2007.

Jessica Benson, Sarah Potts, Molly Todd, Kate Heiman, and Ryan Mosher-Ohr in Five Women Wearing the Same DressFive Women Wearing the Same Dress, the Alan Ball comedy that opens the Riverbend Theatre Collective's 2009 season, takes place during a wedding reception, and the production is kind of like a wedding reception - or at least, the reception for a bride and groom you don't know all that well. It might begin awkwardly, but after a few drinks, dances, and interesting encounters with people you otherwise wouldn't have met, you discover that you're having an unexpectedly fantastic time, and when it's over, you may realize that you're not quite ready to leave.