Bastard Jones

BASTARD JONES is a sexy, smart, rollicking musical comedy that combines a bouncy pop score with period farce. Based on Henry Fielding’s 1749 Brit lit satire TOM JONES (an Oscar-winning film in the 60s), its message is unabashedly American: everyone has the right to the Pursuit of Happiness, no matter their birth circumstances. Bastard Jones reimagines the young, irrepressible foundling Tom Jones as an electric guitar in a harpsichord world.
When charming, low-born Tom makes the mistake of wooing Sophia Shepherd, daughter of the pompous Reverend Shepherd, a chain of secrets, schemings and multiple bed-hoppings is set in motion. Tom reaches the scaffold before order and happiness ultimately prevail.
With a cast of nine playing multiple roles, the show celebrates compassion, inclusion and sexual freedom as it careens from highbrow to lowbrow and back. Electric guitars wail in a harpsichord world, Vaudeville meets Moliere, Spring Awakening meets Candide.

2017 Off-Broadway production (cell theatre, NYC):
Off Broadway Alliance Nomination - Best New Musical Drama Desk Nomination – Best Actor in a Musical (Evan Ruggiero) Chita Rivera Award Nomination – Best Actor/Dancer in a Musical (Evan Ruggiero) Winner – Clive Barnes Award (Evan Ruggiero)

"The show is decidedly, even proudly, lowbudget and lowbrow, but it’s also highspirited. The score… catchy songs, reminiscent of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s poprock catalog… Bastard Jones’ nonjudgmental approach to sex and disability, and its brash desire to entertain, are winning." - NY TIMES

"With a score that is heart-pumping, contemplative and altogether wonderful, Bastard Jones will become one of your favorite shows." - BROADWAYWORLD

"If I could fill this review with synonyms for “brilliant” it still wouldn’t be enough, or do justice to just how good Bastard Jones is." - STAGEBUDDY
2015 AEA 29-hour reading/workshop in New York (Danny Goldstein, director)
2014 Finalist: IMEA Award Best Original Score
2013 Top Ten Finalist - Eugene O'Neill Music Theater Conference (revised version)
2013 NAMT Writers Residency Grant - New Musicals Workshop, Millikin University
2012 Development w/Jerry Patch (Manhattan Theater Club)
2012 Top Ten Finalist – Richard Rodgers Award
2012 Top Ten Finalist - Eugene O'Neill NMTC