In most places, kidnapping a women and trying to make her your bride is considered a horrific crime.
In “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers,” it’s comedy, especially when they break out into song.
The musical, which originally started as a 1954 film produced by MGM Studios, is the winter show for Shawano Community High School. The show opens Wednesday and runs through Feb. 6.
If the show seems familiar to longtime Shawano residents, there’s a reason. Jonathon Kent, who directs and produces the annual musical, also picked the show as the high school’s 2007 production.
Normally, Kent waits at least 10 years before he considers reviving musicals for local audiences, he said. However, he made an exception when he saw the number of talented boys at the school this year, and because “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” is a male-heavy show, it made sense to him to seize the opportunity.
“We always have as many girls as we need or more than we need, but the guy numbers come and go,” Kent said.
All told, there are 29 students in the cast, plus a full orchestra and several students working behind the scenes.
“It’s a really good show for this group of kids,” Kent said. “We have a good crop of guys right now, and we have seven brothers and six suitors, which brings us to 13. Then there are three fathers, which brings it to 16 (male roles).”
The show starts off with the eldest brother, Adam (played by Addison Lewis), traveling into town from his mountain farm in the Oregon Territory with the goal of finding a wife. After being laughed out of the general store, Adam finds Milly (played by Hannah Williams) at a local restaurant, and the two quickly rush to marry.
What Milly doesn’t find out until later is that Adam has six brothers, and the all need women to care for them. She tries to reform them and teaches them how to court women. Their first attempt at courting ends in disaster, however, when the ones they choose already have suitors. A huge fight ensues during a barn raising.
Things really take a turn when Adam tells his brothers the tale of the Sobbing Women, in which men just stole the women they wanted. The brothers return to town and each catches a woman. The suitors give chase but are thwarted by an avalanche.
While the SCHS musical is mostly based on the movie, there are a few subtle changes. There is one scene in the movie where Adam and youngest brother Gideon talk about women being all the same while Milly listens, but in the stage musical, a trio was added to bring the three solo voices into a song called “Love Never Goes Away.”
“A true trio is rare in the world of musicals. It’s common in operas but not in musicals,” Kent said. “It’s the primary reason I decided to do the show in 2007.”
The show was easy enough for the students to relate to, as Kent uses the film when he teaches musical history at SCHS and Shawano Community Middle School. Kent said the musical has become a favorite for many of the students in the show.
The musical requires many of the performers to dance, so Kent brought back Corrie Beula-Kovacs to handle the choreography. She previously worked with many of the students during the 2015 musical “The Wizard of Oz.”
“We’ve had three Saturday rehearsals just for dance so far, and we’ll have one more to polish everything as best we can,” Kent said.
The director said he has received more positive buzz from community members over the announcement about “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” than he has about any other musical he’s brought to Shawano. People have told him the musical is one of their favorites.
“It’s got great songs, great dancing. There’s the humor, especially in kidnapping the girls,” Kent said.
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