Music gets Wichita’s Mosley Street Melodrama in a holiday mood
Dacia Brown knows her boss, Mosley Street Melodrama general manager and associate artistic director Steve Hitchcock, has a thing for Christmas.
“Steve loves Christmas,” the Mosley Street music director says. “He always comes up with a really smart little concept, and it’s usually a little story within itself in the second half.”
Hitchcock, who released a holiday album a few years ago, has the knack for finding songs no one has heard before that turn out to be a perfect fit.
“He’s got his finger on the pulse, the zeitgeist,” said Brown, Mosley music director since 2019. “He specifically does spend a lot of time finding these odd little gems in the corners of the music world and internet.”
After the first half of Mosley’s Christmas show, the soap opera spoof “Holidaze of Our Lives,” comes the second act, known as an olio, largely a musical revue.
“It’s pretty collaborative,” Brown said. “Steve and I usually start talking about Christmas several months ahead. We try not to repeat songs, which is easy to do at Christmas.”
This year’s Christmas olio features some Bing Crosby gems as well as some versions by “Saturday Night Live” alumnae Ana Gasteyer, from her 2019 album “Sugar and Booze.”
“It’s going to feel very nostalgic and very updated,” Brown said.
In this year’s musical, Scott Noah plays a man being bombarded with invitations to Christmas parties around the world.
Brown and Hitchcock go back and forth in the months prior to rehearsal, altering song choices and scripts.
“It’s usually a spitball process,” she said. “He goes back to his drawing board of the story, and he’ll come back to me to fit songs with storylines. It’s pretty collaborative between song choices and story and who we have in the cast and what voices will fit the best.”
Besides Noah and Hitchcock, the cast includes Jaslyn Alexander, Julia Faust, Briley Meek and Kyle Vespestad.
Brown said she tries to tailor the songs to the people who are available.
“We don’t want to have a giant voice like Injoy Fountain,” veteran of “The Voice,” as well as a Mosley and Wichita theater regular, “and not give her a song to showcase that. We want to definitely use what we have to the best of their abilities.”
One of the highlights Brown anticipates is “Hard Candy Christmas,” a song from the Broadway/movie musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
Even though she’s well aware it’s not actually a Christmas song from decidedly not a holiday production, “You’ll want to lay under a Christmas tree and drink some eggnog.”
Many of the performances are already sold out.
Brown said she tries to navigate the feelings that come into play during the holidays with the music.
“You might have a moment where you think, ‘That’s touching,’” she said, “and then immediately we’ll have a moment that’ll make you laugh until you cry a few minutes later.”
‘HOLIDAZE OF OUR LIVES’
When: Nov. 14 to Dec. 20; dinner performances at 6 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, and noon Nov. 29 and Dec. 20
Where: Mosley Street Melodrama, 234 N. Mosley
Tickets: $41-$44 for dinner and show, $30-$33 for show only, from 316-263-0222 or mosleystreet.com