Drink hale! KCQ dines and jests with King Henry VIII at this old Kansas City ‘tavern’

Sometimes we get a question at “What’s Your KCQ?,” do some research on it and decide to answer a slightly different one.

Charles Ballew asked about a bar called King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. We found only a few small mentions of a club called King Arthur’s Merry Go Round. Apparently, it featured live music and “adult” entertainment back in the 1960s. Details were scarce.

On the other hand, King Henry’s Feast (see the similarity?) arrived in Kansas City with considerable pomp and circumstance in 1977. And stuck around for three years. Maybe that’s what he had in mind?

So, what exactly was King Henry’s Feast?

Well, the newspaper ads called it “16th Century Dinner Theatre.”

Today we might say “immersive theater,” as it offered plenty of opportunities for audience interaction. We’d also say some of those interactions might tweak our 21st century sensibilities.

After all, a team of singing and dancing “wenches” served the food and drink, while a jester and other costumed characters cracked wise from an original script.

“The idea was that you’re in an old English tavern and someone says that Henry VIII might be stopping by,” John Woolam said in an interview with KCQ, a partnership with the Kansas City Public Library.

John should know. He played the king!

Here’s where the story gets even better.

In 1977, Woolam had just finished a Nashville version of King Henry’s Feast. He’d planned to get the Kansas City production up and running, then head back to Tennessee. But the “head wench,” Katey McGuckin (who went on to a successful career in local radio), caught the young actor’s eye, and the king decided to stick around.

In 2020, the pair celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary.

“It was an absolute blast,” McGuckin-Woolam said of the energetic singalongs and raucous production numbers she and her cohorts performed nightly. Spoons were “bangers,” used for pounding on tables, misbehavers were put in the stocks, and every time the king bellowed “drink hale,” the audience responded by shouting “wassail.”

Then everybody drank. Did we mention that?

“It wasn’t dirty,” Roberta Solomon said. “It was just spicy … bawdy, you know.”

A young college student getting started in radio at the time, Solomon discovered “you could make good money” at King Henry’s — at least for a food service gig. She said she still fondly remembers when “the doors were thrown open, the piano was playing and everyone was singing. It was delightful.”

As she points out, a lot of talented people were involved with the show, including pianist Brent Streeper, actor C. Wayne Owens, and comedian David Naster. He was one of the mimes who helped warm up the crowd.

And where did all this chaos occur? For the first two years, in the ballroom of the President Hotel downtown. In 1979, Woolam and his partner Tracy Leonard moved the operation to an upstairs space at 39th and Southwest Trafficway.

The Feast continued there for almost a year. When audience interest in it waned, they staged an original Western in the same format. Eventually they decided to ditch theater altogether and focus on booking bands. They changed the venue’s name to Parody Hall (in honor of the parodies that came before) and started carving a niche as the city’s center for roots and blues music.

Forty years after the Feast folded, John Woolam still has the king’s robe. And fond memories of the fun that came with drink hale-ing and wassail-ing.

“People would get so excited about being called up onstage,” he chuckles. It was like ‘The Price Is Right’ or something. It was great.”

Have a question of your own? Ask at kansascity.com/kcq.

This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM.