photo by: Contributed

Marvin and Ann Hunt

Two Lawrence residents will be heard — but not seen — at the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, Kansas City’s version of Shakespeare in the Park.

This year’s festival, which runs now through July 6 at Southmoreland Park, features William Shakespeare’s early comedy “Love’s Labour’s Lost.”

Two Lawrence musicians, husband-and-wife team Marvin and Ann Hunt, wrote the music for the production, which, though it retains the Early Modern English of Tudor England, has been updated to a 1950s setting. Musically, that means martini underground, exotica, Tiki lounge and early rock ‘n’ roll.

“It’s been really a lot of fun,” Marvin, a member of the Kansas Music Hall of Fame, said of the recording gig.

The couple, who are in the electric blues, early rock band House Jumpers and who own a recording studio, had been looking for a new challenge and were delighted when the Shakespeare opportunity came their way one night at the Eldridge Hotel.

Former Lawrencian Greg Mackender, who played in the Mackender Hunt Band with Marvin years ago, stopped by the hotel to hear With a Twist, the Hunts’ duo that features Marvin on guitar, Ann on upright bass and both on vocals. The “Twist” refers to their take on American standards from the first half of the 20th century — songs from Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, T-Bone Walker, BB King and others.

photo by: Contributed

Marvin and Ann Hunt in their studio

“After that (performance), he invited us to consider writing and recording music for the Shakespeare Festival … and we accepted the challenge,” Ann said.

“Love’s Labour’s Lost” is not a musical, but the production relies on dozens of musical segments to introduce characters and scenes and to complement and foreshadow action.

The Hunts were not familiar with Shakespeare’s early comedy, so the first thing they did was to pore over the play, which is about a king and his male companions who swear off the company of women in favor of intellectual pursuits — a pledge that’s predictably and comically confounded by the arrival of a princess and her ladies.

photo by: Dean Davison

A publicity photo for “Love’s Labour’s Lost”

“Ann and I sat down on the couch and read laboriously through ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost,'” Marvin said. And then they started pulling language out of the play — for example, the princess’ line “A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue,” and wrote whole songs based on the sentiments, which they mixed and mastered and sent to Mackender, the play’s music director.

Mackender, who is also a composer and an assisting teaching professor at the UMKC Conservatory, then “chopped up” the songs — adding a trumpet here, a drum there — to use as dozens of musical segments throughout the play.

That kind of reverse engineering is typical, Marvin said, for this kind of writing because “you don’t just record a three-second segment.” Rather, you record an entire song, which then gets woven into the production in different pieces, so that the play’s music has a consistency and fluidity even though it comes along in discrete slices.

While some might be intimidated by the play’s Shakespearean language, the Hunts think the fear is misplaced and that it’s helpful to think of the show as something we’re all familiar with: a “rom-com,” as Ann puts it, or romantic comedy.

“For people who haven’t gone to the festival before (now in its 32nd year), I think they might really enjoy it as a way to get into Shakespeare,” she said.

The performances are free to attend and run Tuesday through Sunday evenings until July 6, weather permitting. The gates at Southmoreland Park, near the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, open at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 8. Attendees are encouraged to bring blankets or folding chairs, as well as picnic items. Outside food and drink, including alcohol, are allowed, but food and beverages will also be available onsite. For more information about the festival, see kcshakes.org.