“Philosophers and fools / Are simply molecules, /
The top of the animal chain, / And all our hopes
and dreams, / Our feelings and our schemes, /
Are chemical reactions in the brain.”
Tilbury Town
Full-length musical · 7 men, 4 women (chorus roles can be added)
Demo songs:
“What Went Wrong?”
“Philosophers and Fools”
“Once Upon a Time”
“Spring Night”
“If I Could”
“The Song of Wandering Aengus” (a fully produced orchestration)
Tilbury Town is a dramatic musical with serious and comic elements. The primary setting of the play is Tilbury Town Cafe, a coffeehouse with folk music and poetry readings, located in a small New England college town in the present.
The play is about the people who hang out in the cafe, with the main characters being Colombia Bob, the owner of the cafe, and Rona, a woman he hires as waitress. Colombia Bob is deeply disappointed by his life, and full of sarcastic, barbed comments. Rona, confident and sharp, is more than able to match wits with Colombia Bob.
Other characters include a poverty-stricken Holocaust survivor known as "the Captain;" Seneca, an elderly curmudgeon who teaches poetry and is in hot pursuit of Mrs. Randall, a famous but seclusive poet; Hank, a gay, existentialist philosophy major whose father is a minister; and Bethany, a young, bubbly, naive student who, unlike the others, is not burdened by life's tragedies. These coffeehouse regulars are joined by Flammonde, a mysterious drifter who shows up, changes their lives, and moves on.
The story follows the gradual revelations of the ghosts that haunt each of the main characters. The central event in the past was the suicide of Mrs. Randall's daughter, who had been Colombia Bob's girlfriend at the local college thirty years ago. As the characters get acquainted, they each disclose past suffering: Rona and her violent ex-husband; Seneca, whose wife left him for his best friend; Hank, whose family is being ravaged by cancer; and the Captain and his past.
The characters argue about life, love, faith, and art. They criticize the materialism, narrow-mindedness, and immorality of American culture as they search for a meaningful existence. They question what it means to be human, from the biology of the body, to the place of love in their lives, to spirituality and faith. They push and prod each other into changing, as they all take steps toward re-affirming their commitment to living life to the fullest.
About This Show
Tilbury Town is an intimate, sophisticated musical with well-developed characters. Most of the songs are poems which have been set to music, including works by Edwin Arlington Robinson, Dylan Thomas, A. E. Housman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, Carl Sandburg, William Butler Yeats, and others. All of the songs but two are in the public domain, and I have obtained permission to use the two that are not. The primary influence for the show was Edwin Arlington Robinson, who created the mythical village of Tilbury Town. In addition, several of the roles in the show are based on characters he created in his poetry.
Available Materials
A draft of the script is completed. Also, a demo CD of five songs has been recorded. Fifteen other songs have been written.
FULL-LENGTH DRAMAS
MUSICALS
ONE-ACT PLAYS
SHORT PLAYS