Six years ago, the Living Room Theatre’s Milking Christmas was well on its way to becoming a wacky alternative holiday favorite for Kansas City’s arts community. Seasoned critics called it “a tour de force” and “an original musical that deserves a future.” Then came a double-whammy: The Living Room’s directors announced in 2019 that the company had to leave its rented Crossroads storefront at 1818 McGee Street, as rising property values priced them out of the district. Then came the pandemic with its devastating impact on performing arts groups the world over.
The Living Room’s holiday musical trundled along, with a streaming version in 2020 and a concert performance in 2021, and it was revived at The Black Box in 2022 before dropping off the scene. Now the company has announced that Milking Christmas is back on its schedule and, from all appearances, bigger and better than ever.
This December 3rd through the 28th the production moves onto the Musical Theater Heritage stage, where it hopes to draw larger audiences and also, with any luck, give The Living Room a shot in the arm toward a new future.
Rusty also hopes that the 20-performance run “will position The Living Room with a financial foothold to be able to get back on its feet and start producing full-time again.” Now in its 16th season, The Living Room is actually one of the city’s newer companies, which is perhaps a testament to the strength and durability of our local theater scene.
Though the company has never had a fallow season, it was especially eager to present at Musical Theater Heritage’s highly visible space “as kind of a reboot,” Rusty said. “I’ve invested my resources toward relaunching The Living Room, and this production of Milking Christmas is the kickoff for that.”
Kansas City has never been at a loss for alternative holiday shows: This year we can see Elf: The Musical (The Coterie Theatre), American Holiday Stories (Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre), and Ebeneezer Scrooge’s Big KC MO Christmas Show (Unicorn Theatre), among others. Milking Christmas manages to poke fun of the holiday season and its materialism (Santa is a corporate CEO, and Macey is a milkmaid who notices that something is awry in Christmastown) while underscoring the hope and the basic goodness that we associate with the holidays.
The show was born of a casual conversation in June 2017. Rusty and the three main authors of the show (Ben Auxier, Brian Huther, and the late Seth Macchi) were still in the middle of their previous success, The Ballad of Lefty and Crabbe, which was such a hit it was later produced in Chicago. “We were all sitting around on a bench outside The Living Room at 1818 McGee, just talking and celebrating the success of that show,” Rusty said. “And it came up in that conversation how great it would be to write a Christmas show.”
No one took the idea seriously until Rusty spoke up: “Well, let’s do it. That slot is open right now, so let’s get to work.” They all went their respective ways—Seth to New York, Ben and Brian to Chicago, and Rusty and Ryan McCall (who would become the musical director) to Kansas City—and for the next five months they put together the initial elements of a show tentatively called Milking Christmas. Through group chats and email, the four worked so collaboratively that today they find it difficult to break down exactly who did what.
“Everything was written very communally,” said Ben, a Kansas City native who today lives mostly in Chicago. “We came up with an outline for the story and from there we just started assigning different scenes and songs for each of us to work on. … Everyone had a hand in writing melodies, everyone had a hand in writing lyrics, and everyone had a hand in writing dialogue.” Ryan, a musician who is on the faculty of The University of Kansas, was in charge of making sure the songs got put to paper. “Then we set up a system of who got final say on each element, so that we didn’t get into endless conversations,” Ben said.
An extraordinary amount of research went into this show: sometimes a single song contains volumes. To prepare for “Why Can’t Christmas Be a Little Naughty, Too?” which is sung by Santa, Seth prepared the team like a scholar.
“He did a deep dive into the history of Santa Claus in all different cultures and regions,” Rusty said. “It was just so much material that it became this kind of encyclopedia of how Santa got started. And with that they just dug in.” (This year’s production of Milking Christmas is dedicated to Seth, who died in July 2024.)
In its initial iteration, Milking Santa was for eight actors who played a variety of roles and who made lightning-fast costume changes a part of the breathless comedic energy of the show. With more space available, this year’s production features 22 players: the eight core players plus an additional ensemble of four adults, eight young professionals ages 11 through 17, and two musicians. (Scenic design is by Mark Exline, costumes by Nancy Robinson, choreography by Jenise Cook, sound design by Daisy Melton, lighting by Zan De Spelder.) Despite MTH’s additional space, “with 22 players onstage, we still plan on this being just as crazy as ever,” Rusty said. “I really think that’s part of the magic.”
Although it may be built from a pun about holiday materialism (and “eight maids a-milking,” from “A Partridge in a Pear Tree”), Milking Christmas contains a fundamentally uplifting message. Each version has, to some extent, attempted to attune itself to the mood of the times. This year’s attempts to move toward “defiant hope,” Ben said, a shift that is achieved not through script changes, perhaps, but with “directorial and design choices,”
Milking Christmas remains accessible and enjoyable for kids and adults. “This year we’re really kind of rounding the edges again and bringing back as much of the silliness and joy as we can,” Rusty said, “and focusing on the family-friendly element of the show.”
To be sure, every holiday classic has its dark side, its villains—be it Mr. Potter or the Grinch, Hans Gruber or the dark and scary Krampus. Young people are familiar with their share of villains. “We found in 2022 that kids were really responding to the darker version,” Rusty added, “because they recognize the parallel of the Disney villain … and of the Disney princess . … They were invested and engaged in those characters while their parents beside them were getting the humor that is meant for the adults in the audience. So everyone was happy.”
Thus for this year’s more escapist production there will be “a very scary forest and a lot of fog and some really spooky lights, but even the bad guys in this version are going to be hilarious to watch.”
—By Paul Horsley
For more information about the company and its history, go to thelivingroomkc.com. For tickets to Milking Christmas, call 816-221-6987 or go to musicaltheaterheritage.com.
To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send an email to paul@kcindependent.com or find him on Facebook (paul.horsley.501) or X/Instagram (@phorsleycritic).
