Let's Face the Music: A New Musical Revue is a production of songs by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George and Ira Gershwin, conceived and directed by Lora Adams, and performed by four of the best singers (and one of the best dancers) in the area-theatre community. While the tempo and energy of the numbers change, the District Theatre's presentation maintains a mellow mood throughout the hour-long show, with the only glaring fault in Saturday's performance being that the piece wasn't also presented in a 1940s nightclub, so that the audience could complete the experience by stepping into the period presented on stage.

Well, it turns out that crossing my fingers and rubbing my lucky rabbit's foot didn't do a damned bit of good, as the Harrison Hilltop Theatre's A Streetcar Named Desire closed, after a mere four performances, on August 31. (There was a chance that the show - originally scheduled to open August 21, but delayed due to scheduling conflicts - would run one or two more times in September, yet subsequent scheduling conflicts wound up precluding a second weekend.) Thursday's production was so enjoyable, though, and Kimberly Furness, Eddie Staver III, and Stephanie Burrough were so thrillingly good in it, that I'm more than happy to offer a post-mortem; had director Derek Bertelsen's take on Tennessee Williams' classic run another weekend, it's unimaginable that any devotee of the art of acting would've even thought of missing it.

At Thursday's preview performance of Quad City Music Guild's Thoroughly Modern Millie, I seated myself in the third-to-last row of the Prospect Park theatre, yet even at that distance, I found myself distracted by an intense, nearly blinding illumination shining from center stage. It turns out, though, that this wasn't any kind of technical glitch; it was just Melissa Anderson Clark grinning at us.