It started as a pun.
As they were working on a Roxy’s Downtown’s holiday show a year ago, an exchange took place between artistic director Rick Bumgardner and music director Simon Hill.
“We could do ‘Dwight Christmas’ about Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, and make it a parody of ‘White Christmas,’” Hill recalled. “(Bumgardner) said, ‘I love it,’ and I said, ‘What?’”
“Dwight Christmas” imagines the Oval Office in 1959, as the 34th president returns two days before the holiday after a three-week overseas tour, but Washington, D.C., is snowed in and can’t be joined by their children and grandchildren.
“Mamie is kind of the star instead of Dwight,” Bumgardner said. “She’s maybe a little more of a general than he is at this moment.”
Finding the right performers to play the Kansas-raised president and his First Lady was a challenge, Bumgardner said.
“We were looking for somebody who could pull it off and be close enough – physically, stature, those kinds of things,” he said.
Nathan Osterle, who played Jekyll in last year’s “Jekyll and Hyde” was the choice for Ike, and Meg Scrivner, in her first role at Roxy’s, plays Mamie.
“She’s diminutive yet spunky and has the energy of a chihuahua,” Bumgardner said. “It’s just perfect.”
Joining the two are real-life couple Chris Loucks as Mamie’s Secret Service agent, and Amy Shelden-Loucks, theater arts director at Trinity Academy, as the president’s secretary.
Bumgardner praised Hill for the research that he did over the past year to add authenticity to “Dwight Christmas.”
“Those two, as individuals and as a couple, what their life together was, was just incredible,” Hill said. “At times it was a challenge to include as much about them as possible, but I also had to remind myself that it has to be entertaining. It’s not a Wikipedia page.”
While the script was devoted to accuracy, the songs are parodies of songs from “White Christmas” – the 1954 holiday movie with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney – which was turned into a stage musical earlier this century.
“It really is an earnest, touching show,” Hill said. “At the heart of it is the relationship between Dwight and Mamie and humanizing these two historical figures and watching these people in the White House and going, ‘Oh, I experience that in my house every year.’”
Hill and Bumgardner are the co-writers and co-lyricists, although Hill said Bumgardner served as a guiding force.
“I threw most of the words at the wall and told him if all this sucks, get rid of it,” he said with a laugh. “I would throw a lot of words on the page and Rick would make them better.”
The Eisenhowers, Bumgardner said, were the first, First Couple to receive Secret Service protection after their presidency.
“Mamie was not happy about it,” he said. “She wanted to be done with the government and have those people out of their lives.”
The script also includes a portion of Eisenhower’s State of the Union address, where he speaks to the Republican Party about where they need to be.
“It is very relevant to where we need to be at in our nation today,” he said.
The fifth member of the “Dwight Christmas” cast is perhaps the most remarkable, Bumgardner said.
Ashlee Thao, who plays the White House pianist, is blind, Bumgardner said. A pianist for Wichita State jazz ensembles that played Roxy’s, he said he had been looking for a way to incorporate her into a production.
“I was just floored a couple of years ago when I saw her. I said to Simon, we’ve got to figure out somehow, some way to use this young lady, because it’s important to show that theater is accessible and doing theater is accessible to anyone who wants to be,” he said.
The only exception he’s had to make in rehearsals, Bumgardner said, is not to refer to measure numbers when starting from the middle of a song, but rather its place in the piece.
“It’s nothing short of amazing to watch her,” he said.
‘DWIGHT CHRISTMAS’
When: Nov. 28 to Dec. 27; performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays during December, and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 23 (no performances Dec. 24-25)
Where: Roxy’s Downtown, 412 ½ E. Douglas
Tickets: From $28.57, from roxysdowntown.com or 316-265-4400
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