Henry Fielding's "The Tragedy of Tragedies; or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great" premiers tonight at 8 p.m. It will be showing at 8 p.m. through Saturday, and Sunday at 2 p.m. in Scott Studio Theatre.
Jim Fritzler, professor of theatre arts, has wanted to do this production since college. He studied the play in a class with Darrel Lloyd and found it the most humorous thing he'd ever read. This semester he ran into Lloyd and decided to direct it for the spring show.
Lloyd will play Scriblerus Secundus.
This production will be unique because of Fritzler's adaptations.
"It's kind of Quentin Tarantino meets the Three Stooges, but 19th century classical language, in a nut shell," Fritzler said.
When Fielding wrote the play in 1730, satirical theatre was then banned in England. He decided to rewrite the play with added footnotes. Ironically, there were more footnotes than script in the play.
"We wanted to keep some of that ridiculous in but you can't do all those footnotes, it's like a really bad college professor, so that's where it came in that we would just kill him part way through the show," Fritzler said.
Killing the character was one of the adaptations Fritzler made to the original script. Fritzler compared the character to the way students feel about boring professors. He won't shut up so they decide to kill him by chopping off his head and shooting it.
Creating fake blood was one of the challenges for this production. They experimented with chocolate, but found it stained the costumes too much. Jelly-like substances were too sticky. They settled on a mix of peanut butter, cornstarch and food coloring. Audience members in the front row can expect to be splashed but will be given ponchos.
The costumes are more complex than normal. There is a giant on four foot stilts, a little man acting on his knees and a hefty princess to name a few.
"They were very challenging, on all fronts. Lots of characters and then some are really weird. It's been a lot of fun, too, though, doing things we don't normally get to do," said Margaret Marsh, costume designer and adjunct instructor of theatre and english.
"In the old days they'd add songs to the show, whatever was the pop tune of the time, so we did that, the pop tunes of now," Fritzler said.
"It's ludicrous with a band made up of a tuba, accordion, violin, and tenor sax," Fritzler said.
"Something I've learned in theatre: comedy is hard. There's a famous quote of the guy who played Santa Claus in 'Miracle on 34th Street,' this wonderful actor, Ed Gwenn. On his death bed his quote was 'death is hard, but comedy is harder,'" Fritzler said.
Fritzler joked that this production has pushed him to change his plans for the fall production. "No matter what play I do next fall, it will have four actors, they will be naked and lit by their own flashlights," Fritzler said.
