'Good News!' comes to life at Wichita State

Wayne Bryan admits that he has a soft spot for "Good News!," the musical about college life in the Roaring '20s, which runs Thursday through Oct. 2 at Wichita State University.

"It is a silly romp that will never qualify as great art," says Bryan, producing artistic director of Music Theatre of Wichita, who was asked to guest-direct the WSU production. "But it's the show that plucked this native Southern Californian out of the West Coast and took me to New York for my Broadway debut."

That 1974 revival of a 1927 show spent a year on the road in pre-Broadway tryouts, then closed after only 16 performances on Broadway, Bryan says with a laugh.

"The show was just too dated. They tried to update it to the 1930s to fit the stars, but that ended up setting it during the Depression, so the longer dress styles didn't make a lot of sense with flappers and sheiks and 'bootleg hooch'," he says. "We were one of the biggest flops of 1974."

Bryan's performance as love-struck Bobby impressed Richard Rodgers, who subsequently cast him in "Rodgers and Hart: A Musical Celebration," preserving his fledgling Broadway and TV career.

"In 1993, we were given the opportunity to revive 'Good News!' and I wanted to do it because I felt I owed the show something," Bryan says. "The songs by DeSylva, Brown and Henderson ('The Varsity Drag,' 'Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries,' 'Button Up Your Overcoat') were still wonderful, but the pacing and lack of a clear plot weren't workable anymore. It was sort of a sketch show with songs in between. We petitioned to get rights to revise it and make it relevant to today's tastes."

"They didn't want to do it at first because, rightly so, they didn't want to let every theater group around the country think they could rewrite any show they wanted. But they realized that 'Good News!' was moribund. It hadn't been performed since the 1974 fiasco. We got the go ahead."

Music Theatre premiered the new version in 1993, then streamlined it when other groups wanted to pick it up, Bryan says.

"As of 2011, over 400 companies in the US, Canada and Great Britain have produced the MTW version of 'Good News!,' and our edition is now the official version. They have to give us credit in their programs," Bryan says. "This upbeat and frothy show has truly been 'Good News!' for Wichita, raising our international profile while putting a lost show back into the repertoire."

MTW shares financially in rights fees, although Bryan says they are split between so many entities that "you might have enough for a nice lunch" from most productions. One production ran eight months, adding up to fund some MTW budget items, Bryan says.

MTW encored a 10th anniversary production in 2003. Now WSU is doing it as an almost-20th anniversary production, Bryan says.

"It's a tribute to the strength and depth of WSU's theater program that they can handle all the rigorous and lengthy music and dancing segments," the guest-director says.

The story revolves around a football player and whether he'll pass a test so he can play in the championship game.

When football hero Tom Marlowe (Matthew Elliott) faces flunking a class taught by Prof. Kenyon (Claire Gerig), the frantic Coach Johnson (Steve Cox) enlists smart Connie Lane (Catherine Bartomeo) to tutor him.

Meanwhile, flapper Babe O'Day (Ariel Daly) dumps dimwitted player Beef Saunders (Aaron Craven) in favor of the love-struck substitute player Bobby Randall (Jacob January).

Romantic entanglements ensue as Tom's snooty, society girlfriend Patricia Bingham (Emily Pirtle) becomes jealous because Tom seems to be falling for his tutor. It gets complicated when team trainer Pooch Kearney (Craig Richardson) discovers that the coach and the teacher were an item decades earlier when they were college students.

If You Go

"GOOD NEWS!"

What: Musical about college life in the Roaring '20s

Where: Wilner Auditorium on WSU's campus, 1845 Fairmount.

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Oct. 1and 2 p.m. Oct. 2.

Tickets: $16 general, $14 seniors/faculty, $6 students. Call box office at 316-978-3233.

This story was originally published September 23, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "'Good News!' comes to life at Wichita State."