Off-Broadway musical, based on 1912 novel, adapted for Beacon

The plot of Daddy-Long-Legs, a 1912 novel by Jean Webster, presents a literary playground, especially when the female protagonist turns annual farm visits into a writer's retreat.

Daddy Long Legs In Concert, based on the book and a 2015 off-Broadway musical, will be performed on April 18 and 19 at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon by special permission of the musical's authors.

Beacon resident Will Reynolds, who directs and provides piano accompaniment, premiered the 90-minute production at Beacon Bonfire in November. The cultural center, a former library built in 1872, is such an apt setting that Howland board member Craig Wolf requested an encore.

Reynolds, cellist Aaron Stier and guitarist Andy Stack are happy to oblige, along with the actors, married couple Erin Mendez Stapleton and Andrew Oppman.

"It's rare for a wife and husband to be in a show together, even more so to take over a two-person musical," says Reynolds, who, as the standby during the off-Broadway run, played the male lead for about a month.

The story echoes Pygmalion (the 1913 play) and My Fair Lady, although the characters in Daddy Long Legs communicate from afar, meet under contrived circumstances and resolve their secrets together.

Q&A: Will Reynolds

By Joey Asher

How did you start in show business?

I always loved singing and theater. I stuttered growing up, and theater helped me break free. Anytime I did something pretend or memorized, the stutter disappeared. In the fourth grade, I went to see the musical Five Guys Named Moe in Chicago. I met the actors afterward, and one said, "They're doing Oliver! this summer. You should audition." I was like, "Wait, I can do that?" I was Oliver's understudy. I also did commercials, including for Cap'n Crunch bars. My line was "Chewy!"

When did you learn to play piano?

Singing came first. I took voice lessons. My two older sisters took piano lessons and hated it. But I became obsessed. Pippin has a song I loved called "Corner of the Sky." It was too advanced for me, but I figured it out. I was mostly self-taught.

You accompany singers at the open mic, Broadway in Beacon. Do you ever get stumped?

I'm classically trained with a BFA in musical theater from Carnegie Mellon, and I have done so much work off and on Broadway that I'm familiar with about 70 percent of the material. But because there's no rehearsal, at times I'm sightreading to save my life, praying my fingers know where to go.

How do you help singers who are nervous?

I know what's going through a singer's mind at every moment. I'm listening to their breathing and phrasing. I adjust the tempo. It's about micro-adjustments that are not noticeable to the audience. Less-experienced singers have usually practiced, but they haven't performed for a large group. Broadway in Beacon is a communal trust fall. We're there to help. Mistakes are part of the art.

What's next?

I'm working with Eric Price on a musical version of Richard Greenberg's Broadway play The Violet Hour, about what happens when a publisher can see the future. It's set in Jazz Age New York City. I loved getting to play in that vocabulary. These characters have such big wants and dreams and unique points of view. We recorded a studio album that has over 2 million streams on Spotify.

For years, benefactor Jervis Pendleton (Oppman) has sent promising but needy young men to college. Due to such "exceptional talent in her original and amusing essays," Jerusha Abbott (Mendez Stapleton) will be the first woman he sponsors. He expects she will become an "author of world renown."

The 18-year-old, who spent most of her childhood in an orphanage, becomes a fish out of water on campus. Strings attached ratchet up the tension: She must write a letter each month to her anonymous benefactor, although he will never reply. Jerusha catches a glimpse of his silhouette, noticing spindly legs, and believes him to be far older than he is.

"How can I be ...