Where does Ron House leave off and Toby Trollope begin?
They're both adventurers and, except for coming from different eras 200 years apart, they could be seen as kindred spirits.Sir Toby Trollope, an English nobleman on his last legs during the American Revolution, is the fictional invention of Ron House, Los Angeles-based playwright, actor and director.
He guest-directed the current production of "The Scandalous Adventures of Sir Toby Trollope" for Park City Performances, being performed Wednesdays-Saturdays on stage at the historic Egyptian Theatre on Main Street in Park City.
While House admits to being a history buff, he also confesses to playing openly fast and loose with historical facts in the somewhat ribald farce, which he co-wrote with Alan Sherman. (Sherman, in fact, has been guest-directing yet another production of the same play for a theater company in Lake Oswego, Ore., a suburb of Portland.)
"Historical liberty" is an understatement.
The premise for "Sir Toby Trollope" is that Toby, who has gone through his family's fortune and has just been given an ultimatum by the king to pay 10,000 pounds in back taxes or be hanged, decides to take his son, Bartholomew (who's spent 12 years as an Oxford undergraduate - and who still can't read), and get him to marry into a family of wealth.
En route to London, Toby and Bart are attacked by a notorious bandit, a man who blends in with high society by day, but who is a Yankee spy at night.
Somehow, they end up on the H.M.S. Bounty and later, in the middle of the Boston Tea Party, where they meet Paul Revere.
The latter is making ends meet by peddling a new line of copper-bottomed cookware (although his wife wonders how much better her life would be if she'd married that nice Mr. Tupper instead).
"I started writing it in England in 1984 with Alan Sherman," House said during a recent interview. "I lived in England right after college and most of my professional work until my mid-30s was done in England. There's a lot of English influence in my writing."
Shortly after moving to England, House got a job as a servant for a couple who lived in the Belgravia section of London, right behind Buckingham Palace. "She was a neurotic American woman with a continental husband. They were very rich and dignitaries would visit there frequently."
He worked for them for about three months, sometime in 1965 or '66, and he was quite surprised to see the pair making international headlines 20 years later. They were Klaus von Bulow and Sunny, the wife he was accused of attempting to murder.
Naturally, this experience inspired House to write yet another off-the-wall comedy called "The Butler Did It," about a young servant caught in the middle of a couple trying to kill each other and blame him.
House is also working on turning another of his comedies into a screenplay. This one is "Dynamic Products," which takes a humorous look at the bizarre world of television hucksters - you know, the ones who buy 30 minutes of air time to promote ridiculous merchandise.
House, who's also written such regionally popular plays as "Bullshot Crummond," "El Grande de Coca-Cola" and "Footlight Frenzy," attended Roosevelt College in Chicago and worked in theater there, including two years with the famous Second City improv group.
The playwright/director said he is pleased with the local cast for "The Scandalous Adventures of Sir Toby Trollope."
"It was as good as I could get anywhere else and I didn't feel I had to make any compromises. I was able to cast a better age range than in some other productions," he said.
House has appeared in the play four times (in the title role), but the Park City engagement marks the first time he's directed it.
In researching the piece, House studied many diaries and journals from the period and visited the site of the Battle of Lexington.
"Did you know that Paul Revere made George Washington's wooden teeth?" House asked.
His first version of the play ran nearly three hours, so he whittled it back to a more watchable time frame.
"It's sort of a cross beteen a Restoration comedy and a 1930s Hollywood movie," he said.
"The Scandalous Adventures of Sir Topy Trollope" continues at 8 p.m. on Wednesdays through Saturdays until April 3 at the Egyptian Theatre. For reservations, call the box office at 649-9371 (Park City).