Shelby Lewis is well-known by Fort Wayne audiences for years of acting and directing, in particular with the plays of Shakespeare. 

On April 13, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic will present Lewis and company collaborating with conductor Andrew Constantine on a unique production you might overlook if you only read the show’s title.

Fort Wayne Philharmonic’s Masterworks concert is billed as Beethoven with Philippe Quint, and indeed, the second half of the concert features the world-renowned violinist performing Beethoven’s “Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 61,” from 1806.

However, I’m choosing to highlight the first piece on the bill, Constantine’s unique production of Falstaff, by British composer Edward Elgar. It’s been anticipated in Fort Wayne for years; scheduled for 2020, it was canceled due to the pandemic, and it did not get performed last season either, due to the player’s strike.

“Elgar, greatest composer who ever lived! Falstaff was his finest piece,” said Constantine when I first spoke with him back in September 2022.

Falstaff is Elgar’s 30-minute work for orchestra, written in 1913; it’s his purely instrumental interpretation of scenes from Shakespeare’s two plays Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, which were written around 1597; they comprise a historical drama about England’s kings, circa 1413. The comic relief in the plays is supplied by one of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters, the retired knight Falstaff, hanging out in the pub with young Prince Hal, the future Henry V.

Incorporating local actors

So, here we are in Fort Wayne, 600 years after the historical Henrys, 425 years after Shakespeare, playing music from 100 years ago. 

Constantine’s innovation is adding to Elgar’s beloved music by bringing Falstaff and Prince Hal on stage, delivering some of Shakespeare’s funniest dialogue between the movements of Elgar’s opus.

In 2019, Constantine recorded his production on an album, Falstaff, with the BBC Orchestra of Wales, featuring two great Shakespearean actors, Samuel West and his son, Timothy. 

“I’ll bring some copies to sell at the concert,” he said.

“I incurred the wrath of the Elgar Society, which I was quite proud of achieving, to enthusiasm from the critics,” he boasted.

Constantine will rely on Lewis to stage this short production with some of our best-known actors, transporting Auer Performance Hall and its audience into a medieval tavern (with 65 musicians and a silver-haired Englishman in a suit waving a baton tucked into the background). Fort Wayne favorites Bob Haluska and Kevin Torwelle will play Falstaff and Prince Hal, respectively, with Nick Tash as Shallow, Brock Graham as Bardolph, and Greg Sitcler as Pistol. Period costumes are by Brianna England.

“I find it very compelling when it happens on stage,” Constantine said about adding Shakespeare’s words. “Otherwise it’s a piece that is phenomenally difficult to play. It’s got magnificent music in it. It ends very calmly, very tranquilly, with the death of Falstaff.”

Finding way to Summit City

Lewis spoke with me last month by phone from Los Angeles, where she recently relocated to pursue her acting career; she frequently commutes to Fort Wayne.

“I grew up in the theater and then I went to a performing arts high school,” she said about Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan. “That was when I first did Shakespeare and fell in love with it instantly. 

“I had two lines in The Winter’s Tale, the smallest part possible, and that was all I needed. I was hooked because I got to watch all of these upperclassmen use these words and dig into them. And I had notes on everybody’s lines, not just my own. That’s probably when I started as a director, without knowing it, because I was studying every character, not just my own.”

After college, Lewis taught acting at the Interlochen for eight summers. During those years, as fate would have it, she met a fellow instructor in the music program, Fort Wayne Philharmonic’s eligible bachelor and rock-star oboe player, Orion Rapp. 

“We met and then a few years later, once I finished my master’s degree in theater education, I came down to Fort Wayne,” she said. 

In 2017, she collaborated as an actor with the Philharmonic in another Shakespeare-inspired production with Mendelssohn’s, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

“They wanted two actors to perform various bits of the play,” she said.

“It was so thrilling to have classical text coupled with classical music. It seemed a perfect fit.”

Theatrical proposal

Along with years of theater work, Lewis has appeared with the Philharmonic or directed their stage productions many times. But what she will be remembered for was a certain incident at the Auer in November. 

After Rapp rather literally blew the audience away with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Concerto for Oboe and Strings,” he dashed around back to the piano, clumsily improvised a love song, then stepped in front of the orchestra and Lewis, dropped to one knee, held out a diamond ring, and asked Lewis to marry him to thunderous cheers when she nodded “yes.” 

Constantine and the entire orchestra were suitably and happily upstaged. You can find the audience cellphone videos on YouTube.

How do you follow that act? Take us out, Shelby.

“The scenes that Andrew Constantine has chosen for these interludes are boisterous, raucous, rude, and hilarious,” she said. “We’re bringing the tavern to the orchestra hall. So, we’re the boisterous part that inserts all of this energy and the fun of Falstaff and his crew.

“We are hoping to give enough of the arc of the story so that we see how much Prince Hal and Falstaff genuinely love and care about each other. So, that by the end, when Hal does have to leave Falstaff behind, there is as much emotion on stage as there is in the music, which is beautiful.”