Robert Gibby Brand performing opposite Vi Tran in Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre’s 2014 production of M. Butterfly, directed by Linda Ade Brand (Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre)
The veteran Kansas City actor shone in multiple roles and made his mark as a scholar, mentor and generous team player
Robert Gibby Brand, the veteran stage actor who passed away in April, made an indelible impression on audiences and fellow theater artists through his artistry and deep knowledge of the material — whether he was performing Shakespeare, Chekhov or Gilbert & Sullivan.
When you speak to the directors and fellow actors who worked with Brand during a career that spanned decades, the picture that emerges is shaped by one overriding impression: Bob Brand was usually the smartest guy in the room.
Brand was a lifelong voracious reader — his wife, opera-and-theater director Linda Ade Brand, said recently that their house was “groaning” under the weight of accumulated books — and he brought that lifetime of accumulated knowledge to every role. Colleagues said that Brand normally had his lines completely memorized on the first day of rehearsal.
In my years of reviewing theater for the Kansas City Star and later for this publication, I watched Brand deliver a series of vivid performances at most of the theater companies in town. I didn’t see every one of his shows, but in retrospect it seems clear that any Brand appearance I missed was my loss — not his. Tragedy, light comedy, young-audiences shows — the genre didn’t matter. Brand brought his unwavering high standards to every performance, whether he was the lead or a supporting character.
Sidonie Garrett, executive artistic director of the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, said Brand appeared in 17 productions, sometimes playing the same role more than once as the festival cycled through the Bard’s iconic comedies, tragedies and history plays.
Twice he played Polonius, the garrulous but doomed father of Ophelia in Hamlet.
“He was absolutely the most perfect Polonius that ever was,” Garrett said.
Garrett said she met Brand when they were both young actors in Missouri Repertory Theatre’s annual production of A Christmas Carol. Through the years, she came to appreciate his deep knowledge of theater and music.
“I was impressed by his great ability with the text, his great knowledge of Shakespeare and history,” she said. “He had a great facility for the language. And he was incredibly kind, always. He was very giving to people.”
Garrett said Brand’s personal history set him apart from many actors.
“His youth, when he was a kid, was spent surrounded by books, certainly Shakespeare, and record albums,” she said. “He listened to classical music and recordings of Shakespeare. Everything about Bob was about literature and language and storytelling and music. He had a lifelong focus on all of those things, so he was very adept at offering useful information at the drop of a hat.”
That may be why Brand seemed so uniquely suited to historical roles. Garrett’s take was that Bob lived in the past as much as the present.
“We all have Bob moments,” she said. “He was a man out of his own time in some ways. He was his own person. He did not have an email address. He never had a cell phone. Bob was focused on different things. You’d have to call the land line. If you had to, you could email Linda. I guess we could have sent something over by carrier pigeon.”
Those eccentricities were one reason Brand was beloved in the theater community.
“None of us are ready for Bob to be gone,” Garrett said.
Brand’s resume included several performances with the Lyric Opera. In a tribute posted on social media, the company said it “joins the Kansas City performing arts community in mourning the passing of a theatrical icon… Robert performed many times with the company, most recently in The Pirates of Penzance in 2017.”
Gary Neal Johnson, who last year retired from acting after a long, laudatory career, said he worked with Brand often, almost exclusively in the annual productions of A Christmas Carol and the Shakespeare festival.
“He’s a wonderful actor,” Johnson said. “Bob Brand, when he’s cast well — when he’s cast in his wheelhouse, as I put it — there is no better actor in this town or any town. He was a gentleman of the first order. And he was a funny guy. I got a lot of his jokes. But I don’t think I got most of his jokes because often they were just over my head and I knew it. Bob wasn’t intending to sail them over my head, but it’s just the way he was.”
John Rensenhouse, who also performed alongside Brand at the Shakespeare Festival and directed him in Kansas City Actors Theatre productions, said Brand’s exceptionally deep knowledge of theater and its literature made him unique.
“He alone, among Kansas City theater professionals, was distinctly respectful of the traditions of the theater and the literature of the theater,” Rensenhouse said. “He was our finest scholar. We must say that. I think he loved the theater more than anyone else I worked with here. He was just so respectful of it. He elevated every production he was involved in.”
There were occasions, Rensenhouse recalled, when Brand’s erudition could try the patience of fellow actors and directors preparing a production on a tight rehearsal schedule.
“There would be some rolling of eyes. ‘Oh, there’s Bob doing his thing again,’” Rensenhouse recalled. “But it was very valuable.”
Rensenhouse cited KCAT’s 2011 production of works by British playwright Harold Pinter.
“He knew Pinter’s work much better than I did,” Rensenhouse said. “So he was actually very helpful… But there were times when he would say, ‘Oh that reminds me of this,’ and it was over my head. Sometimes it was like, ‘That’s great, Bob, but we’re dealing with nuts and bolts here.’”
But Rensenhouse said that when sharing the stage with Brand — two actors doing their work — it was a different story.
“Acting opposite him, you never worried about him failing to remember lines,” Rensenhouse said. “He was always present. There was a confidence about him that was reassuring when you were working with him. He was always there. He was always present and he was very consistent. Once you found a rhythm in a scene, he would be very true to that.”
Rensenhouse added that one of Brand’s most charming qualities was his desire for his colleagues to succeed.
“He was very generous with his fellow actors and telling them he thought they were doing very well,” Rensenhouse said. “You could take heart and confidence in that. Bob was not shy about that at all. And it was great. He just wanted to always have the best production possible and was a real team player.”
Brand lent his talents to memorable productions at most of the professional companies in town, including the Unicorn Theatre and the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre. It was at the MET that Brand performed opposite Vi Tran in a memorable production of “M. Butterfly,” directed by Linda Ade Brand.
MET co-founder Karen Paisley said she first directed Brand in a workshop production of “Discovery of America,” a new work by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Kopit. In subsequent years Brand become a frequent performer on the MET stage, usually under Paisley’s direction and sometimes performing opposite her in “The Light in the Piazza,” “Ragtime” and “Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight,” in which he played Voltaire.
“Bob was always a pleasure to direct and he elevated everybody’s game,” Paisley said. “We had so much fun together. It was joyous. He was such a learned person, but he wasn’t pedantic. It was like having a friend from another time period.”
And, as others have noted, Brand continually recommended additions to her library.
“He always found great books for me to read,” she said. “He was such a deeply generous man.”
Paisley said Brand made a contribution to the local acting community that was not obvious to the casual observer or the occasional theatergoer. As he aged, he was increasingly cast alongside younger, less experienced actors. Whether it was clear to Brand or not, he had become an elder mentor.
“He had a tremendous impact on two generations of actors,” she said. “His work was filling this role without knowing it, of role model. I can’t imagine him thinking of himself that way. But his being, and the way he approached his work, set such a bar that it caused everyone to enter that world and be in his orbit.”
One show Paisley hoped to direct Brand in was The Man of La Mancha, the musical retelling of Don Quixote.
“I wanted to do the impossible dream, The Man of La Mancha, with him,” she said. “That’s who he is. He’s such a dreamer and an idealist. I regret we never got to do that.”
