Director returns to darkly funny ‘Orphans’ with new insight

The last time Shaun-Michael Morse directed Lyle Kessler’s 1983 tragicomedy, “Orphans,” he was a freshly minted theater performance grad from Wichita State University eager to explore the motivations of three very compelling and complex characters.

“Two decades later, now that I’m approaching 50, I’m coming back to it with a more mature, experienced outlook after 10 years of living and working in the (San Francisco) Bay Area. I also have new insight because one of my sons is autistic,” says Morse, whose new version of “Orphans” opens Friday at Wichita Center for the Arts.

Kessler’s blackly funny but emotionally raw story deals with a brash, streetwise petty thief, his naive, vulnerable child-man of a younger brother, and the gangster who becomes their unexpected father figure.

“Back then, I gravitated toward Treat, the older brother, because I understood him,” Morse says. “Now, because of my autistic son, I have new thoughts about the younger brother, Phillip, whom I feel is on the autism scale. I know what makes him tick. There are a lot of echoes from before, but it’s different for me now.”

Recent WSU theater performance grads Damian Padilla and Sean Gestle play Treat and Phillip, respectively. Retired para-educator and book retailer David Allen Bailey is the mysterious, potentially dangerous and surprisingly paternal Harold.

“Orphans” was revived on Broadway just last year with Alec Baldwin as Harold. It snagged two Tony Award nominations, including best revival of a play. Albert Finney won the British Olivier Award as best actor playing Harold in London in 1986, then reprised his role in the 1987 film.

To accentuate the in-your-face aspects of this intimate drama, Morse is staging it in-the-round in the middle of the Center Theatre stage with seating for only 150 each performance.

“I didn’t want the audience to be far away from the actors. I want them on top of each other. The actors need to feel the claustrophobia of their setting. I want everybody to have a real, visceral experience,” Morse says. “As (New York Times) critic Frank Rich wrote, this play is ‘theater for the senses and emotions.’”

Padilla describes his character, Treat, the older brother, as “a passionately violent young man in his early 20s who suffers from an underbelly of rage.”

“He and his brother have been left to fend for themselves in an old dilapidated house. He becomes the caretaker for his brother and he robs people to help them survive,” says Padilla (Center’s “War Paint,” WSU’s “The 39 Steps). “I think he does this out of deep brotherly love, but it’s a volatile, unhealthy relationship.”

Padilla says Treat essentially keeps his brother a prisoner in their decaying home, controlling him by making him fearful of the outside world.

“What I like about playing Treat is that he is very brash. He’s street savvy rather than book smart. He has his wits about him. He thinks that’s all he needs to know to keep him and his brother going,” Padilla says.

As the younger brother, Gestle says his character is “a very innocent teenager, a shut-in who has never left home.” Phillip acts younger than his years, he says, because he’s never been educated.

“All he knows is what he learned from ‘The Price is Right’ and old Errol Flynn movies on TV. He watches the world go by outside his window but he’s afraid to go out. He’s a wild child who may have some form of autism. I’ve been doing research on that and it’s helped a lot with the character,” says Gestle (Center’s “War Paint,” WSU’s “Twelfth Night”).

“And as the oldest of my own siblings, I can see a lot of my younger brothers in him – his curiosity, his wonder at the simple beauties of life. His innocence is mind-blowing,” Gestle says. “He believes everything his brother tells him, but he suspects there may be more to the world – including women. I can identify with that curiosity.”

Gangster Harold comes into the boys’ lives when Treat kidnaps him in a caper-gone-wrong, but quickly has the tables turned on him. The older man slips into the vacuum left by their faithless father who abandoned them after their mother died years ago.

“Harold has some demons of his own that he regularly tries to exorcise. Like the boys, he was an orphan. But he was never adopted and that has always haunted him. Now in his 50s, he’s still especially sensitive to that, so he sort of adopts the two,” says Bailey, a veteran of the avant garde Theatre on Consignment and a familiar face on local stages, from the Center’s “Arcadia” and “The Tempest” to Wichita Community Theatre’s “Inherit the Wind” to Guild Hall Players’ “The Lion in Winter.”

“Harold isn’t violent, but he’s fascinated by violence. He’s a real charmer. I picture him as a high-class conman on the edges of society. He’s an autodidact: self-educated. I don’t think he’s been to prison because he’s too clever,” Bailey says. “He feels like a mentor to the boys. He likes imparting bits of wisdom, even if they’re not always accurate. He has a wide range of knowledge, but it’s shallow.”

Bailey says what he likes about Harold is his optimism.

“He’s not pie-eyed about it, but he does believe people are salvageable. They can learn and change. That appeals to me.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2014 at 11:26 AM with the headline "Director returns to darkly funny ‘Orphans’ with new insight."