Credits
Written by Ron AAlgar Watt.
Amanda Smith as Volunteer, Translator
Brian Lynch as Lt. O'Murphy
Jason Wallace as Charles Delgado
Maggie Rowbotham as Dane Janitor
Ron AAlgar Watt as Johnny Foreigner
Sabrina Snyder as Obnoxious Kid
Produced and directed by Ron AAlgar Watt for AAlgar Productions © 2018
By this point, it was starting to become clear that SVT would be winding down soon. Since I'd given each of our local troupe the chance to shine in a starring role (apart from myself — I had an idea for that one but nothing ever came of it), I wanted to give one to longtime Unpaid Voice Acting Player Jason Wallace. Unsurprisingly, he was brilliant.
This character was largely based on Mandrake the Magician. Mandrake, like so many other characters from this era, basically exploited non-Americans for his own gain. He had a wacky foreign sidekick and everything. So I wanted to use our "modern sensibilities" to shine a light on how awful these old-time protagonists really were. I'm not sure the comedy came through as much as I'd like — sometimes I have trouble balancing comedy and serious issues in a story like this.
“Charles Delgado” was a reference to William Powell's character from the Thin Man movies — Nick Charles. (Delgado is "thin" in Spanish.) I wanted this character to be a sort of suave William Powell type and I think Jason really sold that. The point was to make him charming and likable but to very clearly say it's still not okay that he's kind of a racist.
I've also gotten a lot of comedic mileage out of not knowing the difference between stage magic and “real” magic. Both are equally dumb to me. (Sorry, people who believe in magic.)
Johnny Foreigner is, of course, Tordovian, which is our go-to stand-in for “exotic foreign” characters. I wanted to do a story that talked about how racist these old stories were without actually writing more racist characters in the process. Which is pretty much the whole point of Tordovians!
“Take a saw and saw him” is a reference to Strong Bad.
Sabrina as the snotty kid was great. That is all.
Of course the cop is Irish. The cop is always Irish. And I'm amazed we've never used Brian for one of these before.
Yeah, I hit the horrible racism pretty hard here. I don't regret that. I just wish it had been funnier.
Maggie and I pretty much just swapped our usual Tordovian voices for these roles — I did her voice for Sandra, and she did my voice for Frank.
“Dane Janitor” and “Scotch Steward” follow in the long tradition of named Tordovian characters from Contentment Corner.
Amanda's doing her best Marc Evan Jackson here. And it's quite good.
“As a white American male...” Look, I told you this wasn't subtle. Did... did you not believe me?
