How can bachelor party go wrong? This play will imagine a scene from Olathe in 1860s

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you mixed 1860s Olathe with a lot of melodrama and a pinch of James Bond, the Olathe Civic Theatre Association has a production for you. “An Old-Fashioned Melodrama: Bonds, Bail Bonds” will be their third in conjunction with the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm.

Previous productions have imagined drama at the Hyer Boot Company and postulated how Olathe’s roundabouts came to be. This one imagines a fictional tale of how the bail bonds business originated in Olathe by way of a bachelor party gone wrong and a wicked sheriff.

It’s the kind of show where the audience is encouraged to cheer the heroes and boo the villains.

Shelly Banks, historian for the Olathe Civic Theatre Association, and former Olathe Civic Theatre Association board member Peter Leondedis wrote the script.

“I do most of the heavy lifting, and he pumps up the jokes,” Banks said.

They throw names of streets, businesses and other places in Olathe into the script as hints for the audience.

“They’re very Olathe. We try to make them funny but also true to Olathe or very inside baseball to Olathe history,” Banks said.

Don’t expect the show to contain a lot of historical facts, but it will have plenty of period-accurate clothing, thanks to Mahaffie.

“Mahaffie has kind of a costume closet for all their volunteers, where they all wear period-appropriate outfits,” Banks said.

Also appearing courtesy of the historic farm is a goat.

“Animals in a show — always fun. The goat has a cameo where he will be walking with his handler and the hero comes along and discovers this goat that needs to go home. We use a real goat, and (later) he gets replaced by a stunt double,” Banks said.

This partnership between the Olathe Civic Theatre Association and Mahaffie started in 2015, Banks said. They had planned to do their third show in 2019, but the schedules didn’t match up, and they postponed to 2020. That got canceled with the pandemic, so they’re just getting to do it this year.

Unlike their normal shows, which go on at 500 E. Loula St., this hourlong show will be outdoors underneath the picnic shelter on the grounds of the Mahaffie farm.

For both the Olathe Civic Theatre Association and Mahaffie, the show serves as a fundraiser. Mahaffie will put its share toward Title I school scholarships for its programming, while the Association will use the funds to boost its Jan Conner Scholarship Fund, which awards $500 scholarships to graduating Olathe high school students.

“An Old-Fashioned Melodrama: Bonds, Bail Bonds” will have three performances: 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 20 and 2 p.m. Aug. 21.. Tickets are $20 for those ages 13 and up and $10 for kids ages 5 to 12. Tickets include admission to the Mahaffie site.

This story was originally published July 15, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How can bachelor party go wrong? This play will imagine a scene from Olathe in 1860s."