Kathie Doyle-Lipe, Henry McNulty, David Olson and Taylor Wenglikowski joined E.J. Iannelli in the KPBX studio to fill listeners in on the Spokane Civic Theatre's new production of She Loves Me. The musical opens in the theater's Firth J. Chew studio this week.
Doyle-Lipe is directing She Loves Me, and McNulty is the show's music director. Olson and Wenglikowski are playing the young will-they-won't-they couple, Georg Nowack and Amalia Balash, respectively. They are unwitting romantic pen pals who have a tense relationship at their day job working in a parfumerie.
This 1963 musical is based on the 1937 play Parfumerie by the Hungarian playwright Miklós László. That play was later adapted into the films The Shop Around the Corner (1940), In the Good Old Summertime (1949) and You've Got Mail (1998).
Doyle-Lipe outlined its premise and some of the characters involved as well as the process of translating the show to the Civic's smaller studio space. She also spoke to the settings and events that make She Loves Me well timed for the holidays.
Wenglikowski and Olson both gave some background on their characters and their familiarity with the many earlier iterations of She Loves Me. McNulty explained the changes he'd made to the pit orchestra in the absence of an actual pit. He has opted for strings and keys only, with the musicians in full view of the audience.
To open the interview, McNulty accompanied Wenglikowski on piano as she sang "Will He Like Me?" live in the SPR performance space. McNulty later returned to the performance space with Olson to close the interview "She Loves Me."
She Loves Me opens this Friday (Dec. 1) at the Spokane Civic Theatre in their Firth J. Chew studio space. And it runs there until Dec. 17.
Tickets and more information are at the Spokane Civic Theatre's website or CivicTickets.com. Or call their box office at (509) 325-2507.