Author and musician Mike Craver wrote "Bosh and
Moonshine at the Gaiety Saloon" for the Boot Hill
Repertory Company.
By Diane Lewis,
The Wichita Eagle, 10/4/98 When North Carolinian Mike Craver first saw the restored hotel in the far
western Kansas town of Cimarron, he got the inspiration for his latest musical
comedy, "Bosh and Moonshine at the Gaiety Saloon."
Thursday, the Boot Hill Repertory Company in Dodge City will open its 16th
season by staging the world premiere of "Bosh and Moonshine."
Performances continue through Oct. 31.
Craver wrote "Bosh and Moonshine" for the Dodge City community theatrical
group.
A longtime performer, Craver has written and collaborated on a number of
popular off-Broadway and regional theater shows --"Radio Gals", "Oil City
Symphony" and "Smoke on the Mountain." Craver has appeared in numerous
productions of the shows, as he's doing in Dodge City.
"I always seem to write a part for myself," he said in a telephone interview
from Dodge City. He had not intended to perform, but, heck, his character
has a couple of good songs, so he cast himself.
Craver has been in Dodge since late August, first to fine-tune the show, then
to rehearse.
Set in contemporary Dodge City, "Bosh and Moonshine" tells the story of a
young woman who has taken out a loan and turned a landmark hotel into a
bed-and-breakfast. As she does the last-minute cleaning before the grand
opening, the vacuum cleaner explodes, and out the dust step several early
Dodge residents.
The past and present meet head-on and the spirits from the past discover that
they have unfinished business to attend to. Key to the story is the tale of Dora
Hand, who was accidentally shot while sleeping at the mayor's house in 1878.
A North Carolinian who toured with The Red Clay Ramblers for a dozen
years, then worked in New York for 10 more, Craver first came to Kansas in
May 1997 to see the repertory company's production of "Radio Gals." Boot
Hill was the first theater to get the rights to the show after it closed
off-Broadway.
It was the first time Craver and two other cast members [Klea Blackhurst and Emily Mikesell] who came west had
seen it as audience members. "We had been in it about a zillion times," Craver
said.
"I stayed for five days. Don took me to Cimarron and to the Cimarron Hotel,"
he said referring to Don Steele, director of the rep company. He met the
people at the rep company and visited Garden City, Jetmore and High Plains
Public Radio.
Western Kansas, especially around Cimarron, is, in Craver's words, "unusual,
especially to someone from the East." Craver now lives in Lexington, N.C.,
which bills itself as the barbecue capital of the world.
"I just farm myself out," Craver said in a soft drawl. He performs in regional
theaters and does productions of "Oil City" and "Radio Gals" and also does
some writing.
It was during that trip in 1997 that Steele broached the possibility of Craver
writing a show for his repertory company. Steele wanted, Craver said,
"something with cowboy songs in it. But he basically gave me free rein to write
about what I wanted to."
Two of the characters in the play really did live in Dodge City -- Mysterious
Dave Mather, a gunslinger, and Fannie Mae Garretson, a saloon singer.
Fannie Mae, Craver said, was with Dora Hand the night she was shot.
Craver did most of the research for the play at the public library in Lexington.
He relied on the Time-Life series on the West, especially one part of the series
called "The Townsmen." He also got information from the state historical
society.
For the past year he has been working on the play off and on and writing
some 18 songs -- words and music -- for it. This is the first show he has
written without a collaborator.
"I'm basically a musician," he said. "That's how I've made my living most of my
life." In this show, he plays an accordion "a little." He also plays a dour
undertaker, Rev. Mould.
Craver's shows are typically about small towns that could be anyone's
hometown. "Smoke on the Mountain" (he did musical arrangements) takes
place in rural North Carolina. In "Oil City Symphony," four high school alumni
return to give a concert in honor of a beloved teacher. "Radio Gals" is about
an independent radio station operated by a woman in Arkansas in the '20s.
He doesn't know if "Bose and Moonshine" will fly in other theaters. When he
first started writing it, he thought he wanted it to. Today, he's less certain.
"I don't know the answer to that yet. It is about Dodge City. But Dodge City
is a place that's known to a lot of people through the television show and the
old Westerns. It could be done by other places, but I'm not trying to put that
kind of burden on it."
"I just want it to be enjoyed by the people here. If there's anything beyond
that, well and good. If there isn't, that's fine, too."
His approach to this show has been different, too. "With the other shows, the
goal was always to do it in New York. That's the final role for people who
write musicals.
"This is something I've done for here. Other than that, I don't have any
long-range plans for it. I like that about it. It takes a lot of the pressure off a
part of me."
He's more relaxed, he said, because New York is not the aim.
Craver described the music as "Old West music hall." And it's not low-brow,
either. "Cowboys and people out West actually had a penchant for
Shakespeare and serious drama and arty music, as well as the gaudy saloon
stuff that people generally associate with the West." There also are ballads and
pieces that sound like Gilbert and Sullivan.
"The place was just dripping with history and the spirits of people who had
lived there," Craver said of his 1997 visit to the Cimarron Hotel, built in 1888.
"I could see how you could conjure up some spooks here. Good ones, not
evil ones. But benevolent ones. Standing in that lobby, I just got the idea of for
that show."
Owner and operator Kathleen Holt was his inspiration, he said. She has created
a Victorian look for the old hotel. "I just got the idea for doing a show about
somebody who had done that sort of thing and was haunted by the spirits of
the past."
Further, Craver is intrigued by the fact that Dodge City is only 120 years old.
"The history seems just that much closer to you.
"These people from history -- they really did lead an intense, hard kind of life.
They tried to make the best of it. I guess that's why I'm interested in what they
did artistically."
In addition to saloons that sometimes featured classical music and orchestras,
places like Dodge City had theaters, touring performers, performances of
Shakespeare and more. In the midst of a harsh climate, Craver observed,
"they tried to maintain a level of sophistication and culture, and a lot of it was
pretty high-toned. It's not quite the way it's been portrayed by Hollywood and
television."
Original Playbill
1888 D.C. Times review contributed by the honorable Lloyd Shinn
Photograph: "Mysterious Dave Mather, Gunslinger and Lawman"
LINKS:
THE BELLE OF THE WABASH
SARAH BERNHARDT IN TEXAS
OKLAHOMA HALE & DAMNATION
QUEEN OF THE COWTOWNS
RADIO GALS
OIL CITY SYMPHONY
last updated: Oct. 5, 2020