Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale. Yes, that one.
The original three-hour tour is coming to stage next week in Emporia State University’s production of “Gilligan’s Island: The Musical.” Written by the TV series creator Sherwood Schwartz and his family, the play returns audience members to the antics of the shipwrecked passengers and crew of the S.S. Minnow, particularly the bumbling, well-meaning first mate Gilligan who continually fouls up every attempt to get off the island.
It may sound like a strange choice for a university production. But ESU’s summer season has traditionally ended on a light note to draw audiences, with productions such as “Snoopy!!!” or “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” And what could be lighter, sillier fun than the most rerun castaways of all time?
“The strength of the show was that it was a mix of vaudevillians with new and talented young actors,” director Jim Bartruff said. “There were some wonderful things that happened. There were some stupid things that happened. But the stupid things were always forgivable because it was so much fun.”
The elements of the stage show would be recognizable to any fan of late-night TV. After a chorus of the famous theme song, the Minnow wrecks on an uninhabited island. Seven unlikely castaways, from the millionaire and his wife to the professor and Mary Anne, have to learn to get along as they survive natural disasters, plan harebrained escape attempts — and maybe even save the world in the process.
The musical was first produced in 1992 in North Carolina, with a revised version hitting stages around the country for about the last five years or so. That gave Bartruff a double whammy: a show that was not only instantly familiar to audiences, but was also relatively new.
Make that instantly familiar to most audiences. For Bartruff’s company of college actors, believe it or not, this is fairly new stuff.
“To you and me and our generation, these are familiar characters and familiar situations,”
Bartruff said. “But for the students doing this, they’re coming to it for the first time. If they’ve seen ‘Gilligan,’ it’s late at night on Nick at Nite.”
Of course there are certain expectations when you do “Gilligan’s Island.” Bartruff speculates that the cast may have bought up every grass skirt and piece of fake bamboo between here and Kansas City. And it wouldn’t be the island without at least a few coconuts.
But fans of the show may find a few answers to nagging questions as well, such as how millionaire Thurston Howell III and his wife Lovey managed to get shipwrecked with a full formal wardrobe. And in one song, “The Professor’s Lament,” the most brilliant of the shipwrecked company considers why he can invent anything except a way off the island.
Silly, indeed. But just because it’s silly doesn’t mean it’s easy.
“Silliness in service to entertainment is a very tricky commodity,” Bartruff said. Most of the cast of the original show, he noted, were experienced comics — particularly Jim Backus as the millionaire, who was already nationally famous as the voice of Mr. Magoo. It takes skill, Bartruff said, to keep a silly situation funny rather than tedious.
And as light as it is, even “Gilligan’s Island” has some serious lessons to be drawn from it. Starting with the classic American joke situation — “So if you were stranded on a desert island and could only take ...” — the series manages to say a lot about togetherness and even forgiveness.
“There may have been blowups,” Bartruff said. “There may have been numerous instances where the islanders turned away from one another. But they always came together at the end. ...
“It’s not thinly veiled, but there are issues of tolerance and humanity at the core of the story that keeps it all together. That despite all our hardships, what we do together counts. That in the end, we have more similarities than differences. If that isn’t a compelling message for our times, I don’t know what is.”
And yes, that tolerance even extends to Gilligan, the perpetual screwup who still manages to save everyone’s necks.
“He is us,” Bartruff said. “Gilligan is us. We all have done these dumb things at moments that are very inconvenient. But fortunately, we are surrounded by friends and family who keep accepting us in spite of our problems and flaws.”
“Gilligan’s Island: The Musical” runs July 25 through July 28. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. in the Bruder Theatre of King Hall. It will also be “rerun” in a revival showing Aug. 17 and 18.
• For ticket information, call the box office at (877) 341-6378.