Showboat 2009 Accolades
The Showboat has recently made the news. The Quad City Times and the River Cities Reader have posted their annual theatre best of… articles. Here’s how the Showboat fared:
QUAD CITY TIMES
- Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last 5 Years,” which opened the same weekend for both Riverbend Theatre Collective and the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre. Each was well-done, with a defined contrast in styles between Riverbend’s Allison Collins-Elfline and Dana Joel Nicholson; and Clinton’s Nicole Horton and Joshua Sohn.
- Clinton’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” in a style best described as Andrew Lloyd Webber meets TV Land.
- Clinton’s “Singin’ in the Rain,” with artistic director Patrick Stinson’s nonchalant glee in the Gene Kelly role.
RIVER CITIES READER
-
Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. There was no way the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre, with its intimate playing area, was going to lend Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical extravaganza the grandiosity it’s generally associated with. Instead, director Patrick Stinson and designers Adam Parboosingh, Candace Zak, and Shannan Osborn went for ingenuity, and came back with a clever, TV-influenced dreamscape featuring inspiringly simple and continually inventive nods to Star Trek, Bonanza, and – with puppets filling out the cast of brothers – even Sesame Street.
- Sarah Stephan, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. There were youthful talents aplenty in director Jalayne Riewerts’ wonderful rendition of Barbara Robinson’s yuletide novel. Yet Stephan, in a remarkably poised Clinton Showboat debut, managed to be the production’s most touching and most hilarious figure. Her mean-spirited Imogene caused you to choke up when the girl, in a lovely release of honest emotion, learned the true meaning of Christmas. The rest of the time, especially when Imogene responded to her classmates’ sincerity with crack one-liners and an unshakable deadpan, you were choking on your laughter.
We appreciate the acknowledgments and cannot wait to show you what we have in store for 2010.









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