What do Lucy and Ethel, classic comediennes of the 1950s, have in common with an opera based on Shakespeare’s late 16th-century comedy classic The Merry Wives of Windsor?

Seems director Ellen Schlaefer has some “splaining” to do.

“I think Alice Ford and Meg Page were the original Lucy and Ethel,” said Schlaefer, who has transported the opera’s two main characters from Elizabethan England to the American suburbs of the 1950s for Opera at USC’s production of The Merry Wives of Windsor Feb. 4 and 6. “Their antics as they repel the advances of the lecherous Falstaff made me think of the comedic pair from I Love Lucy immediately. And their husbands, Mr. Ford and Mr. Page, have as much trouble keeping up with their wives as Ricky and Fred do. The 1950s is a fun time period, and this is a fun opera. It's a good match."

In the comic opera’s updated setting, Windsor, England, becomes South Windsor, Conn., a suburb of Hartford, then the insurance capital of the world. One of the husbands is an insurance executive, and the young lovers are a high-school student and a college freshman at the University of Connecticut. There’s a beatnik poet from New Haven, and the nostalgic chorus of neighbors includes a carhop, a milkman, and a Fuller Brush salesman.

Andy Mills of USC’s theatre department has designed a clever set that brings the fabulous ’50s to life. Costumer Janet Kile has recreated the fashions of the period with both vintage and specially built pieces. “We’ve raided our closets and everybody else’s,” Schlaefer said.

F. Marc Rattray, founder and director of the Lexington Youth Chorale and director of music at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Irmo, plays Falstaff. Andrea Price Baxley plays Alice Ford, and graduate student Britnee Siemon plays Meg Page. Both are DMA candidates. Graduate students Raphael Rada and G. Scott Wild play their husbands. Graduate students Jaeyoon Kim and Lisa Sain Odom perform the roles of high-school sweethearts Fenton and Ann.

Although the student performers are “buying into the ‘50s theme 100 percent,” Schlaefer said, they don’t always “get” the ’50s references.

“It’s a little disconcerting that my frame of reference and the students’ frame of reference don’t overlap,” Schlaefer said. “I have a prop or two that are vintage. So for someone who’s never picked up your grandmother’s old heavy telephone and is used to something that fits in their pocket, you get, ‘This is too heavy. I can’t carry it.’ But I’m really pleased at how they’ve responded, and I have a few visual tricks in the production that I hope people will enjoy.”

After her first production for Opera at USC last fall, Schlaefer received “more e-mails, phone calls, old-fashioned hand-written letters from people saying how much fun they had. And they had fun because the kids on stage were having fun.

“I’d love for people to take two and a half hours out of their day and try something different if they’ve never been to the opera,” Schlaefer said. “Atlanta’s not in the Super Bowl, and it’s the middle of winter, so why not?”

Schlaefer added that parking at Keenan High School, where Merry Wives will be performed in English, is ample and convenient in keeping with the show’s nostalgic setting. “We’re back to the ’50s style of easy parking,” she said.

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