What if you were foolish, and yet thought you were smart? Now extend that to everyone you know, all laboring under same delusion. Add music, color, costume, and a talented cast, and you have the world of "Shlemiel the First."

With barely a word spoken, "Les Miserables" is closer to operetta than splashy musical. The Broadway musical and the movie are based on Victor Hugo's 1862 novel about poverty, death, injustice and orphans who would become so famous.

A Gnome for Christmas (Written by Sarah Brandt, Directed by Doug Finlayson) is a Holiday musical now being presented by the Imaginary Theatre Company, the resident, professional, touring ensemble of The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

The story of Anne Frank is one known the world over. A young girl and her older sister and parents, and four others, escaped the Nazi persecution of the Jews by hiding in the attic of an office building (Anne’s “Secret Annex”) in Amsterdam for slightly more than two years before being captured and sent to various concentration camps where all but one (perhaps two) of them died.

The St. Louis MUNY’s 94^th season has opened fresh and bright in many theatrical aspects with the energetic Thoroughly Modern Millie. The stage musical was based on a 1968 film musical of the same name, but with a lot of the plot and music replaced. It won the TONY for Best Musical in 2002.

The Washington University Ovations Series continued its 2011–2012 offerings with a performance by The Water Coolers, a company based in New York.

A creature was found living in a cave "many miles to the South" near the West Virginian coal-mining town of Hope Falls.

I’ve never seen the musical Avenue Q before, nor read a review. Having seen it now, however, as performed by the [Insert Name Here] theatre company, I can just imagine some of the witty phrases that might, in the past, have been used in reviews, based on its life-size puppets and obvious ties to Sesame Street and Jim Henson’s Muppets. I would guess its themes of racism (“Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”), sexual preference (“If You Were Gay”), on-stage puppet, um, physical encounters (“You Can be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You’re Makin’ Love)”), online porn (“The Internet is for Porn”), and females of questionable morals, among others, would no doubt have engendered a load of double-entendres and naughty plays on words. My timid contribution is the title of this review.

NTC Productions®, the Nebraska Theatre Caravan, is currently touring the country (their 33^rd touring year) with the classic Christmas season production, A Christmas Carol. Originally a novella by Charles Dickens (first published in 1843), this musical adaption was written by Charles Jones, former NTC Executive Director. They recently stopped for a four-show run at the Fox Theatre, featuring a large cast and modest, yet very effective, set.

The Alpha Players of Florissant have definitely taken on an ambitious production in their staging of South Pacific. This lavish musical is set against the backdrop of American and Japanese hostilities in the islands of the south pacific during WWII.