Synopsis:
So here goes, says Billy as the play opens. My Dad, His Mission, and My Good Deed. Billy, inspired by his favorite proto-Romantic boy-poet and imaginary best friend Thomas Chatterton, is convinced he has an idea that will make his dad happy -- for like the first time ever. Tis a consummation Billy devoutly wishes. Hes just disappointed his father woefully by failing to graduate from high school because I flunked just about every class I took. Samuel is a fanatical believer in the theory that Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford -- and not that semi-illiterate seller of malt from the provinces, William Shakespere -- is the Immortal Bard. His lifes mission is to find proof. Billy, inspired by Chatterton, contrives a plan that necessitates a daring bit of seemingly innocent forgery. Threaded through the play are Billys interactions with the starving Thomas and with the Bible-obsessed teenage Vincent van Gogh, who longs for nothing but to please the poor -- and to win the hand of his unapproachable cousin. Alas, things go horribly awry. Thomas, the Marvelous Boy who perished in his pride dies by his own hand at the age of 17. Vincent is scorned in love and fired from the pathetic post he clings to teaching catechism to coalminers. Billy and Samuel experience first triumph, then ignominy when Billys good deed is revealed as fraud. Its Vincent who somehow seems to find a way forward out of the shambles -- in a question he poses the prophet Ezekiel about the confounding behavior demanded of him by Yahweh: I asked Ezekiel, Why eat ye dung? It is, of course, the taste that everyone tastes who has ever heard a call and answered it.
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