About the Play:

The Scandalous Adventures of Sir Toby Trollope is a full-length comedy by Ron House and Alan Shearman. Sir Toby Trollope is a low-life confidence man in 1774. He is to be hanged by King George III for tax evasion. He flees England and accidentally sparks off the American Revolution. It's Tom Jones meets Monty Python in this rollicking comedy that offers brightly funny, and highly satirical send-ups of some very familiar moments in early American history.

The Scandalous Adventures of Sir Toby Trollope is a historical farce in the fast-paced comic style of Monty Python and SCTV, with a plot that veers from Zorro to the Scarlet Pimpernel, Dracula, Sweeny Todd and HMS Bounty's Major Pitcairn. The setting is England, 1784. Sir Toby Trollope has gone through his family's fortune and has just been given an ultimatum by King George III to pay 10,000 pounds in back taxes or be hanged. Toby conspires to save his neck by marrying his imbecilic son Bartholomew to an impressionable young woman so that he can live off her father's wealth. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty! They meet – and quickly offend – England's richest man, Sir Alex Hardegristle (who destroys anything he doesn't understand) and his beautiful but hallucinatory daughter, Fanny. The Hardegristle madness stems from 600 years of inbreeding. In fear of their lives, the Trollopes flee England on the H.M.S. Bounty. In the ensuing mutiny, they are thrown overboard and into the middle of the Boston Tea Party. They now meet and are quickly swindled by John Hancock, a sleazy insurance salesman; Paul Revere, a fast-talking pots and pans vendor hawking his latest invention, Reverware; and George Washington with his spring loaded wooden teeth. Events escalate to Lexington Green, where the Trollopes accidentally spark off the American Revolution. But for these buffoons, American might have remained a peace loving British colony.

The Scandalous Adventures of Sir Toby Trollope premiered in 1989 at the San Diego Repertory Theatre. Since then the play has been successfully staged at several professional theatres and has been mounted by colleges and community theatres.

Cast: 2 female, 5 male

What people say:

"Hilarious." — Variety

"A wacky, hysterical rather than historical farce from those manufacturers of mayhem." — Los Angeles Theatre & Entertainment Review

"A must see laugh riot." — Albany Times

"...chock-full of laughs." — Drama-Logue

About the Playwright:

Ron House (1939-2016) was an actor, producer, writer and teacher. A graduate of Second City in his native Chicago, he later founded a group called Low Moan Spectacular whose members wrote, staged and starred in plays. A sensation in the London underground Theatre Company, they eventually relocated to New York. He is a co-author of El Grande de Coca-Cola, Footlight Frenzy, Bullshot Crummond, and The Scandalous Adventures of Sir Toby Trollope. All four shows continue to be performed across the US and around the world.

Alan Shearman is a film and television actor, director and script writer in Los Angeles. He came to the US over 35 years ago with Low Moan Spectacular, the British comedy group founded by Ron House, with whom he created several the Off-Broadway hits. He has been directing comedies, musicals, musical comedies and comedies-with-music for over 20 years and along the way has collected six "Best Director" awards.