Just in time for the new school year, Pioneer Drama Service has published my eleventh play, Wicked Is As Wicked Does.
This large-cast comedy brings back all of your favorite characters from the fairy tales but turns those tales on their heads. Here those four nasty ladies who caused so much mischief become the heroes as they try to foil a fiendish plot to banish them to an icy wasteland.
Here's the synopsis:
Think all those fairy tales really ended with “happily ever after?” Well, think again! In this hilarious follow-up, Snow White has taken the throne and is about to marry her prince, who actually is quite intolerable. He is trying to outlaw magic and has sentenced the four Wickeds — Snow White’s Wicked Queen, Cinderella’s Wicked Stepmother, Sleeping Beauty’s Wicked Fairy and the Frog Prince’s Wicked Witch — to nine million hours of community service. But even that’s not enough for Prince Intolerable. He vows that as soon as he marries Queen Snow, he’ll send the Wickeds to Grimstad, where they’ll never be heard from again. Really, though, the Wickeds aren’t so bad anymore, so there’s only one way to foil his plans: stop the wedding! But the Wickeds are a little rusty in the magic department. Can they make their old spells work in time? What if they get caught? And why did the seven dwarfs turn into wombats? Find out in this zany comedy that proves there’s a little good in everyone... though sometimes, very little.It's always a challenge to make bad guys not only good, but likable. And these baddies seem especially repulsive. I mean, what kind of person (or fairy) would put a girl in a 100-year coma just because she was snubbed for the girl's christening?
Writing guru Blake Snyder would tell you it's simple. Just have the baddies save a cat.
Well, that seemed completely out of character for them. So I took the opposite tack. Instead of having them do something nice, I made them targets of prejudice as the evil prince plots to kick them out of the kingdom without trial or just cause.
I'm hoping this will be just as effective in winning audiences' sympathy. After all, these gals have already paid the penalty for their crimes (Wicked Fairy, for example, traveled the kingdom placing warning labels on all the spindles).
And besides, you'll be laughing so much at their crazy antics, you'll forget they were ever bad to begin with.
Wicked Is As Wicked Does has a cast of 28 (7M, 12F and 9 roles that can be either) and runs about 60 minutes. To read a sample or order a script for perusal, click here.
