I won’t lie to you: I consider myself a bit of an expert when it comes to televised baking shows. If you’ve ever opted into watching one yourself, you can rightly assume that you’re in for a treat with the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's latest offering Just Desserts, its book and lyrics by Barbara Campbell and its music by Brad Ross.

A world-premiere production shepherded by area stage talents Daniel Haughey and Michael Callahan, Aaron Power! The Musical – running March 17 through 20 at the Center for Living Arts' East Studio in Rock Island – boasts a perfectly timely premise for a show opening on St. Patrick's Day, as its narrative concerns a young man who travels abroad to uncover the secrets of his Irish ancestry. Complicating matters for our protagonist, and likely to make them even more fascinating for the musical's patrons, is that the young man in question is Native American.

Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the inspiration for an Oscar-nominated film, playwright David Lindsay-Abaire's family drama Rabbit Hole enjoys a March 18 through 27 run at Moline's Playcrafters Barn Theatre, the acclaimed work lauded by Entertainment Weekly as “a transcendent and deeply affecting new play which shifts perfectly from hilarity to grief.”

Seeing a play by Lauren Gunderson at the Black Box Theatre is now one of my favorite pastimes. On Thursday, I attended the opening-night performance of Gunderson's The Revolutionists, and my third go-'round with this playwright and this theatre proves that they harmonize as deliciously as Brie and a baguette.