Wichita Community Theatre opens 70th season with Neil Simon comedy ‘Fools’

When Neil Simon’s 1981 comic fable, “Fools,” about love, stupidity and a 200-year-old curse in 19th-century Ukraine, opens Wednesday, it will mark the launch of Wichita Community Theatre’s 70th season.

WCT is the oldest theater troupe in town, founded by legendary Wichita State University theater doyenne Mary Jane Teall when “Give ’em Hell” Harry S. Truman was still in the White House, Bing Crosby’s “Going My Way” won the Oscar as best picture, and Broadway was still two years away from creating the Tony Awards.

Music Theatre Wichita, the city’s second-oldest active troupe, wouldn’t come along for another 25 years. And Crown Uptown Theatre (1977), Cabaret Oldtown, now renamed Roxy’s Downtown (1993), and Mosley Street Melodrama (1997) weren’t yet even glimmers in their founders’ eyes – mostly because all but one hadn’t been born yet.

WCT began performances in space provided by the Unitarian Church. When the nonprofit group outgrew the church, it found a home at WSU’s Wilner Auditorium where Teall taught, said Mary Lou Phipps-Winfrey, longtime local actress, director and playwright. Phipps-Winfrey researched the history of the group along with fellow longtime actress/director Dona Lancaster. They relied heavily on scrapbooks compiled over the decades by longtime supporter Lil Reidy.

For a time, beginning in 1958, according to local historian James J. Crawley, the group brought in celebrity guest performers like Chester Morris, Eddie Bracken, John Carradine, Peggy Cartwright, Lyle Talbot and McDonald Carey to front some of their shows. It was a move that brought national attention from Variety and Pageant magazines, said Crawley, who credits the appearances to efforts of Martin Umansky, KAKE-TV founder and longtime president, and his wife, Mary, an actress and one of WCT’s founding members.

In the 1960s, Phipps-Winfrey and Lancaster said, WCT bought the old 1932 art deco Temple Emanu-El at Second and Fountain for a workshop and headquarters while performing in the 675-seat Little Theatre at the newly opened Century II – a theater later named in honor of Teall, who died in a car crash in 1994.

The two noted that WCT had some surprising celebrity endorsements early on. Helen Hayes, dubbed “First Lady of the American Theatre,” then appearing in Wichita in a touring production of “A Program for Two Players,” and world-famous violinist Isaac Stern, guest artist with the Wichita Symphony, attended the dedication of the workshop at 258 N. Fountain.

“Hayes commented that the commandment inscribed above the workshop doors (left over from synagogue days) – ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ – was appropriate for volunteer theater activities,” Phipps-Winfrey said.

When money became tight in the 1990s, longtime supporters Lawrence and Beth Sifford stepped in to stabilize the group, from housekeeping to fundraising to even writing original plays to get a break on royalties, Lancaster and Phipps-Winfrey said. To economize further, the group left Century II and returned to the workshop, turning the space into a 125-seat theater where it continues to perform up to 10 shows a season. New remodeling for risers to improve sight lines has reduced seating to about 90.

Over the decades, the two longtime WCT members say, the group has withstood financial shortfalls, artistic squabbles, raised eyebrows and wagging tongues over total nudity in its acclaimed “Equus” and church pickets and disrupted performances of “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.” It’s also survived the walking out of its first salaried manager and subsequent decision to rely solely on volunteers.

So, why has it succeeded where so many other theater groups have fallen by the wayside?

“In a word: Community, like it says in our name. It’s the one place where anyone with a theater interest can come and be fulfilled, no matter what level of talent or experience or area of interest you have,” Phipps-Winfrey said. “Other groups expect you to already have the skills, but we will help you learn and grow. And if you already have experience but have time for only one thing a year, that’s just fine. We welcome everyone into our family.”

Adds Lancaster: “Community theater is also the best therapy anyone could want, either on stage or in the audience. Laughing or crying, it covers all emotions.”

Steve Miotto, who is directing the first show of the 70th anniversary season, says that Neil Simon’s “Fools” is one of his lesser-known plays but is a joy to work on “because it’s just pure silliness.”

“This is not your typical Neil Simon. This is a period piece set in 19th-century Ukraine and it doesn’t seem to have any autobiographical elements like so many of his shows. It’s a farce with some slapstick about a total village under a curse of stupidity and a teacher who tries to break it,” says Miotto, a Cox Communications employee who has been with WCT for three years as an actor and director, most recently appearing in last Christmas’ detective show “Holmes for the Holidays.”

The tale revolves around an ambitious new teacher named Leon Tolchinsky (played by Logan Kressly), who is hired to tutor the utterly clueless teen daughter, Sophia (Alyssa Aaby), of the village doctor (Michael Criss) and his wife (Jessica Fisher).

When he arrives, he is appalled to see that everyone is as dim-witted, confused and frustratingly nonsensical as his pupil because the whole village was cursed with stupidity 200 years before when an ill-fated romance left two families feuding. The teacher, who falls for the beautiful Sophia, tries to find a way to break the spell. But he has only 24 hours or he, too, will be taken over by the curse.

Playing Count Gregor, Leon’s arrogant, entitled rival for Sophia, is Kenneth Mitchell. Playing the villagers are Cody Green as the shepherd, Paul Savage as the magistrate and Maureen Kirby as the shopkeeper.

What’s weird and ironic about the show, Miotto said, is that Simon purposely wrote this off-beat comedy to foil divorce arrangements with ex-wife Marsha Mason, who was promised profits from his next Broadway show after their split. Although directed by legendary Mike Nichols with such star names as John Rubinstein, Pamela Reed, Florence Stanley and Harold Gould, “Fools” closed after only 40 performances on Broadway.

“But it’s become sort of a staple of schools and community theaters,” Miotto said with a laugh, noting that it also inspired a 1990 musical version. “Even when he tries to write a flop, he can’t.”

This story was originally published September 4, 2015 at 3:01 PM with the headline "Wichita Community Theatre opens 70th season with Neil Simon comedy ‘Fools’."