Prop: George W. Bush doll in flight suit
Appearing in: “W!,” Theater Wit
When Tom Mula wrote the book for the musical satire “W!” he wasn’t worried about including a scene that requires a doll of the president wearing a flight suit. Mula had already spied an action figure dressed in the outfit President Bush wore when he landed in a Navy jet plane on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.
But when Mula went to the Web site that sold the make-believe fighter pilot, it was missing in action–that is, sold out.
Theater Wit’s artistic director Jeremy Wechsler was assigned to the search and rescue mission. He called nearly a dozen stores. Some had sold their last doll; others said they had it. “I’d show up, and in one case it wasn’t even a George Bush doll,” he says, “and more often it was George Bush, but only in a cowboy outfit or dressed in an Army jacket like the one he wore when he visited the troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving. It even had a little plastic turkey that snaps onto his little hands like a Ken accessory.” But, Wechsler says, “I got so enamored of these dolls that I kept buying them.”
Not willing to accept defeat, he purchased a George Bush doll in a business suit and a G.I. Joe action figure outfitted in a paratrooper’s uniform. “I stripped them down . . . and put G.I. Joe’s clothes on the George Bush doll,” Wechsler says. “So at least we had the Bush doll with the turkey as our back-up doll and Bush dressed in G.I. Joe clothes as our emergency reserve guy.”
When Mula heard Wechsler had failed, he found a flight-suited W. on eBay. A brand new doll costs $29.99; Mula paid $70 for his.
In a scene during “W!” Mula, portraying the flesh and blood president, plays with the presidential doll and pretends that it’s a real soldier. “That’s what the president was doing in the flight suit,” he says. “Bush often wears a costume for a photo op. I wanted to include his child-like wonder in the show.”
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“W !” runs through Oct. 31, Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont Ave., $21; 773-883-1090.