<\/p>\n
It started as a pun.<\/p>\n
As they were working on a Roxy\u2019s Downtown\u2019s holiday show a year ago, an exchange took place between artistic director Rick Bumgardner and music director Simon Hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could do \u2018Dwight Christmas\u2019 about Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, and make it a parody of \u2018White Christmas,\u2019\u201d Hill recalled. \u201c(Bumgardner) said, \u2018I love it,\u2019 and I said, \u2018What?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDwight Christmas\u201d 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\u2019t be joined by their children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n
\u201cMamie is kind of the star instead of Dwight,\u201d Bumgardner said. \u201cShe\u2019s maybe a little more of a general than he is at this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finding the right performers to play the Kansas-raised president and his First Lady was a challenge, Bumgardner said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were looking for somebody who could pull it off and be close enough \u2013 physically, stature, those kinds of things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nathan Osterle, who played Jekyll in last year\u2019s \u201cJekyll and Hyde\u201d was the choice for Ike, and Meg Scrivner, in her first role at Roxy\u2019s, plays Mamie.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s diminutive yet spunky and has the energy of a chihuahua,\u201d Bumgardner said. \u201cIt\u2019s just perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joining the two are real-life couple Chris Loucks as Mamie\u2019s Secret Service agent, and Amy Shelden-Loucks, theater arts director at Trinity Academy, as the president\u2019s secretary.<\/p>\n
Bumgardner praised Hill for the research that he did over the past year to add authenticity to \u201cDwight Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThose two, as individuals and as a couple, what their life together was, was just incredible,\u201d Hill said. \u201cAt 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\u2019s not a Wikipedia page.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the script was devoted to accuracy, the songs are parodies of songs from \u201cWhite Christmas\u201d \u2013 the 1954 holiday movie with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney \u2013 which was turned into a stage musical earlier this century.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really is an earnest, touching show,\u201d Hill said. \u201cAt 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, \u2018Oh, I experience that in my house every year.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill and Bumgardner are the co-writers and co-lyricists, although Hill said Bumgardner served as a guiding force.<\/p>\n
\u201cI threw most of the words at the wall and told him if all this sucks, get rid of it,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cI would throw a lot of words on the page and Rick would make them better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Eisenhowers, Bumgardner said, were the first, First Couple to receive Secret Service protection after their presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cMamie was not happy about it,\u201d he said. \u201cShe wanted to be done with the government and have those people out of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
The script also includes a portion of Eisenhower\u2019s State of the Union address, where he speaks to the Republican Party about where they need to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very relevant to where we need to be at in our nation today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The fifth member of the \u201cDwight Christmas\u201d cast is perhaps the most remarkable, Bumgardner said.<\/p>\n
Ashlee Thao, who plays the White House pianist, is blind, Bumgardner said. A pianist for Wichita State jazz ensembles that played Roxy\u2019s, he said he had been looking for a way to incorporate her into a production.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just floored a couple of years ago when I saw her. I said to Simon, we\u2019ve got to figure out somehow, some way to use this young lady, because it\u2019s important to show that theater is accessible and doing theater is accessible to anyone who wants to be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The only exception he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nothing short of amazing to watch her,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When:<\/b> 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)<\/p>\n
Where:<\/b> Roxy\u2019s Downtown, 412 \u00bd E. Douglas<\/p>\n
Tickets:<\/b> From $28.57, from roxysdowntown.com or 316-265-4400<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It started as a pun. As they were working on a Roxy\u2019s Downtown\u2019s holiday show a year ago, an exchange took place between artistic director Rick Bumgardner and music director Simon Hill. \u201cWe could do \u2018Dwight Christmas\u2019 about Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, and make it a parody of \u2018White Christmas,\u2019\u201d Hill recalled. \u201c(Bumgardner) said, \u2018I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2173593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[417951,22116,417949,417948,417952,417950],"class_list":["post-2173592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-bumgardner","tag-christmas","tag-dwight-christmas","tag-mamie-eisenhower","tag-rick-bumgardner","tag-simon-hill"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Roxys-Downtown-likes-Ike-for-its-holiday-show-\u2018Dwight-Christmas.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2173592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2173594,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173592\/revisions\/2173594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2173593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2173592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2173592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2173592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}