Music Theatre Wichita brings the new with ‘Twelfth Night’
Wayne Bryan’s final show in an official capacity with Music Theatre Wichita puts him into some unchartered territory.
“This is one of those handful of shows that I’m directing that I’ve never seen before,” MTW’s 34-year veteran, currently producing director said of “Twelfth Night,” which opens Wednesday for a five-show run at Century II convention hall.
Bryan compared the musical version of the Shakespeare comedy to the way Andrew Lloyd Webber treated the Bible story in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
“They’re both stories that are told often, and in both of those cases it’s a 90-minute one-act musical with colorful imagery and a real mix of musical styles,” Bryan said, including Motown, ‘80s pop, New Orleans jazz and vaudeville. “It’s a very eclectic mix of styles that sounds like it would be a mess, but the composer-writer-lyricist Shaina Taub, did such a great job of taking her inspiration from the Shakespeare text but going in completely different directions with her songs. I’m completely impressed with how it’s written.”
Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, believed to have been written in the early 17th century, centers on twins Viola (played here by Jessica Reese) and Sebastian (Jeremiah Porter), who are separated by a shipwreck. Viola, disguised as a man, falls in love with Duke Orsino (Ryan Vasquez), who in turn falls for Olivia (Brianna Stoute).
The dialogue, which takes up about one-fourth of the production, comes from Shakespeare, he added.
“All of the themes that are in the original — life, the empowerment a woman can feel dressing in men’s garb — is seen in a whole new light on today’s world,” Bryan said. “How do we deal with gender identity and how do we relate power between people?”
“Twelfth Night,” Bryan said, has a contemporary setting — albeit one where cellphones and social media do not exist.
“Nothing will look of what we think as Shakespearean,” he said. “It’s a surprising show and it has moments of genuine emotion, melancholy and pathos interspersed with mistaken identity comedy.”
None of the directors nor cast members had seen the musical version of “Twelfth Night.” The only MTW connection is performer Javier Ignacio, who understudied Malvolio.
Bryan said “it is both terrifying and freeing” to perform a piece that neither he nor the cast and crew, and likely not the audience, have seen before.
“You’re awfully afraid you’re going to miss something because you haven’t seen it to know what’s successful,” Bryan said. “You don’t know where the laughs are, you don’t know what the texture of the show feels like.
“On the other hand, the audience here will have no set expectations,” he added. “We don’t have a template to follow, and we don’t feel like a cookie-cutter version of the show that everybody has seen a lot.”
Brian J. Marcum, who is completing the transition to artistic director during this season, is choreographer for “Twelfth Night.”
“It’s exciting because I can do whatever I want,” Marcum said with a laugh. “It’s all so contemporary and fun. I find myself just wanting to listen to the music all of the time because it’s contemporary and pop and varied and fun.”
The 90-minute running time allows for more creativity, Marcum added.
“Because it’s a shorter show we have time to not churn things out so fast and can be working and workshop and create in the room,” he said.
“Twelfth Night” was announced as part of the 2020 season at the final MTW show in the summer of 2019, and was delayed until this fall, in a season that stretched shows out over seven months and alternated venues between Century II convention hall and the Capitol Federal Amphitheater in Andover.
Emily Orr was offered the part of Feste — which also includes being the onstage vocal music director and accordion player, as dictated in the script — in the summer of 2019.
“It’s such a specific requirement of what has to go into the show,” she said, and began learning to play the squeezebox. “Figuring out the orientation of that was a challenge, and just the straps and everything. Getting used to the added weight on the body has been an interesting experience to deal with.”
Stoute, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, was asked in August to play Olivia.
“When I auditioned for this show I didn’t even know it existed,” she said. “I listened to the music and immediately (thought) I love this show. It’s a really good show to put on now where we are in the world, because it’s about community and love and friendship.”
Vasquez, who has been a part of the Broadway and touring casts of “Hamilton,” said he was proud of the fact that the new musical made Shakespeare more accessible to a current audience.
“I love that they’re using the original dialogue and you’re able to create an amalgam of all these things that are accessible and cool,” he said.
Along with Timothy Robu (who plays Sir Toby Belch) and Karen Robu (as Maria), Monte Riegel Wheeler is one of the Wichita-based actors in the production.
“Any time Wayne needs someone to play a colossal jackass, he calls me,” Wheeler said with a laugh. “I’m beginning to take it personally.”
Wheeler is producing artistic director of Mosley Street Melodrama and is heavily involved with other theater companies in town but said he and the Robus treat MTW shows like a “summer vacation.”
“I get to live the dream of being an actor — for a total of two weeks. It is a great joy, and it has been for many years,” he said. “It becomes your sole focus, which we really all love. You can stop for a minute wearing all those hats.”
“Twelfth Night” is Bryan’s 168th MTW show as a producing director and his 56th as a director. He will continue next season in an advisory capacity — “I can still be like Obi Wan-Kenobi and beam in,” he chuckled — and is already booked to return to his role as Man in the Chair for “The Drowsy Chaperone,” which is scheduled to conclude the 2021 season. (He has appeared in 14 shows through his 34 years with MTW.)
Bryan said his is trying not to get too sentimental in his final rehearsals and last show.
“I try not to weep in front of the cast,” he said with a laugh.
“I never like a show that plays longer than it stays interesting, and I never like guests who stay too long,” he said. “I’ve had 34 years here to learn how to be a producer and to continue to learn from the people around me.”
Bryan said that too often he’s seen directors who have outstayed their welcome in a theater and he didn’t want to fall into that category.
He said he considers himself as part of the MTW team and not the leader of the organization.
“Musical theater, I like to think, is a very collaborative process where we don’t just work in isolation. Nobody is the sole engine behind something that happens in musical theater,” he said. “Through the years it’s been happy for me to learn from these folks but to always acknowledge that there is a team out there that is making it happen.”
Bryan said he has the utmost confidence in the future of MTW with Marcum as artistic director and Angela Cassette as managing director, taking administrative duties off his hands in recent years.
“It all feels so right to me that intellectually I know this is the right thing to do,” Bryan said. “Of course, I’ll be sentimental about it, but I’ll be very happy.”
“Twelfth Night” by Music Theatre Wichita
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, Nov. 10-13; 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, Nov. 13-14
Where: Century II convention hall, 225 W. Douglas
Tickets: $45, from mtwichita.org or 316-265-3107
This story was originally published November 7, 2021 at 3:17 AM.