My new play, Tom Jones, will get its world premiere at the Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota, FL this spring! I’ve been waiting for the official press release to come out before I said anything and lo and behold it appeared in the Sarasota Herald Tribune today.
I’m thrilled and nervous (my perpetual state of mind, minus the thrilled) to have a new play hit the stage. And I’m very excited that Florida Studio Theatre is doing the world premiere. FST produced Around the World in 80 Days when the script was still getting its legs and the show was a huge hit for them. I think the show received five Sarasota Magazine Theatre Award nominations. So yea Florida Studio Theatre.
Is It About Tom Jones the Welsh Singer?
No, it is not about Tom Jones the Welsh singer, although (spoiler alert) I make reference to him in the script. Of course I do. I am a man without shame. Or taste, as some people have told me. This Tom Jones is the title character in the 346,747 word Fielding novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. I have reduced the 1000-page book into what I’m hoping will be a 2-hour fun-filled show. Good God I’m hoping it’s fun-filled. And here I’ve reduced the 2-hour play into one paragraph:
Tom Jones, a charming young man of questionable birth, is madly in love with Sophia Western, who is equally in love with Tom. But when Sophia’s father arranges for her to marry a loathsome man, she flees for her life. When Tom is subsequently banished from his home, he goes in search of Sophia. Aristocrats, wenches and scalawags abound in this bawdy and rollicking romp through the back roads and bedchambers of England.
And here’s what Florida Studio Theatre Artistic Director Richard Hopkins has to say about the show (This is the part my mom will like because someone she doesn’t know says nice things about me):
“First of all, Tom Jones is a wonderful swashbuckler of a story in the classic style of the great adventures. Second, it is adapted by Mark Brown, one of the best of our contemporary comic playwrights who authored Around the World in 80 Days, which was a huge hit for FST. Between Henry Fielding’s classic novel, and Mark’s ribald sense of theatricality, these two together make for a cosmic and comic energy relished by actors and directors alike. Mark has that rare ability to twist a classic into contemporary sensibility and make it thoroughly enjoyable. His adaptation is filled with the stuff of great theatre: love, sex, and laughter.”
I’m sure I’ll have many updates before opening night.
Tom Jones will run April 9-June 1 in FST’s Gompertz Theatre, 1247 First St., Sarasota. For more information: 366-9000; floridastudiotheatre.org
