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BACKSTORY WITH BOBBY KENISTON
In 1974, Ronald House and Diz White were in a fringe comedy troupe called The Low Moans
when they first developed the initial concept for Bullshot Crummond, tonight's entertainment.
The idea was fleshed out with fellow troupe members Alan Shearman, John Neville-Andrews,
and Derek Cunningham, and had its first production in San Francisco at the Palladium Theater
the very year it was written.
The play, as you will soon witness for yourselves, falls into a very particular style of comedy we
like to call parody. Specifically, Bullshot Crummond, the name and the play, is a send-up of the
character Bulldog Drummond, who was created by author H.C. McNeile in a 1920 novel named
after the hero. Bulldog was a World War I veteran who had trouble going back to the boredom of
a humdrum civilian life. He decided to place advertisements, looking for excitement, until, lo and
behold, he transformed from listless veteran into a world class adventurer! And there were
plenty of adventures to be had--- McNeile wrote ten more novels, four short stories and four
stage plays about them!
Certainly there are elements (including his name) that made Bulldog Drummond a perfect target
for the parody provided by The Low Moans' performers. While researching this play and the
source material it spoofs, I began to wonder just how long parody has been around, and where
it all came from. It should have come as no surprise to learn that it has been around since
Ancient Greece at the very least. In his Poetics, Aristotle mentions Hegemon of Thasos as the
inventor of parody. Hegemon would slightly alter the wording of well-known poems, and thus
“transformed the sublime into the ridiculous.” There were other narrative poems in Ancient
Greek literature known as a “parodia”, which took the ideas of epics, but treated them in a light,
satirical manner with mock-heroic subjects, like The Diliad (sadly, a lost parody of the Iliad,
mentioned by Aristotle) by Nicochares. Aristotle, always a bit self-serious, wasn't much of a fan,
saying that Homer made men better than they were, while these writers of parody made men
worse.
Perhaps Aristotle was missing the point, or simply didn't know how to take a joke. Parody
continued to thrive. It was first mentioned in English in 1598's “Every Man in His Humor” by Ben
Jonson, and Shakespeare, of course, used parody quite freely, notably in A Midsummer Night's
Dream with a group of rustics making a clown show from Pyramus and Thisbe, complete with a
talking Wall (something our former President would no doubt love) and Lion.
Nowadays, it is not uncommon for the parody itself to outlive its source material, which may be
the case for Bullshot Crummond, a play still widely produced and a well-known crowd pleaser
(trust me, you'll see in just a few minutes). It is reported that when Mel Brooks, a master in the
art of parody, saw the play, he was so impressed by its zaniness and humor that he said it
couldn't ever possibly be filmed. And while Mr. Brooks has been right about so many things in
his 95 years, he was wrong about this. Perhaps inspired by the success of other parody films
like Airplane!, a movie adaptation simply called Bullshot was released in the UK in 1983, with
three of the Low Moans reprising their stage roles, and several cameos from famous British
comedians. The film was produced by George Harrison's production company, Handmade
Films, as the former Beatle was known to love a good laugh.
And a good laugh is what we have in store for you, dear audience, as our very own lively troupe
of performers wait in the wings for the curtain to rise on Lakewood Theater's production of
Bullshot Crummond,
If you are interested in learning more about the play or producing it, you can check it out at Concord Theatricals by following this link:
https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/5604/bullshot-crummond
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