Wichita theater stages bluegrass musical written by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell

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Just because Steve Martin co-wrote the music for “Bright Star,” which opens at Roxy’s Downtown next week, it doesn’t mean the show is full of wild-and-crazy-guy tunes.

“Most people hear Steve Martin and they think they’re going to get a kind of raucous comedy just from the zany characters he’s done,” said John Keckeisen, who plays the male lead. “That’s not to say the show is without humor, but it is a little more grounded.”

Shannon McMillan, who plays the female lead, added, “The music is so full of heart and enriching. You’ll leave very happy, I hope.”

The bluegrass musical, which Martin co-wrote with singer Edie Brickell, is set in the mid-1940s with flashbacks to 1923 in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. It was inspired by Martin and Brickell’s album “Love Has Come for You,” and the story is based on the folk tale of the Iron Mountain Baby.

“It’s a fun, what-if story surrounding actual events of the Iron Mountain Baby,” McMillan said. “There’s spoilers and secrets to be found out.”

“Bright Star” won Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards in 2016.

Keckeisen, a Wichita theater veteran, said the bluegrass feel of the show was something new for him.

“It’s got that quintessential banjo and fiddle throughout the whole show,” he said. “It’s really fun music and not music you hear in modern musicals.

“It’s been fun to kind of dip my toes into a pool I’m not as familiar with and gets me out of my comfort zone, which is both terrifying and exciting all at the same time,” Keckeisen added.

The 13-member cast is backed by a nine-person band, visible throughout the show.

Josh Robinson is directing “Bright Star” for the second time in less than a year, after a run last April at Southwestern College in Winfield, where he’s chairman of the musical theater department.

“I’m forcing myself to rediscover it, so I’m not going through the same journey I was a year ago with this show but exploring it as if I’m looking at the text and the music completely for the first time,” he said. “You get to explore it as if it is brand new to you. You find so much more depth because I’ve been able to spend more time with it.”

The Southwestern audience loved “Bright Star,” he said.

“Winfield is obviously a bluegrass town,” he said, noting the annual festival there. “It went a little nuts for it.”

‘Bright Star’

When: April 7-24; performances at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays

Where: Roxy’s Downtown, 412 ½ E. Douglas

Tickets: $30 at roxysdowntown.com or 265-4400