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Prejudice and Polarization
The Sticky-Fingered Foodie is a witty two-play collection featuring Grandma, food-truck thieves, and comic chaos while exploring hunger, generosity, and human assumptions. What first inspired this collection?
My conscious mind would cite the early, short plays of Edward Albee, which I saw and read in my youth over fifty years ago and which have remained odd favorites ever since. My unconscious mind might respond differently, of course. Let’s just say Albee+. Admittedly, there’s a lot of actual life experience stirred in. While dropping off a few spare canned goods at a local food bank recently, I came face-to-face with people who were basically just like me minus a few spare canned goods. That certainly got me a-thinkin‘!
What did you want readers to consider about generosity and judgment?
We’re all in this together. Full stop. I’m a big believer in the concept that when we share with and support each other, we’re all better off. We may not agree with or even particularly like each other, but, spoiler alert, that shouldn’t matter. That may sound woefully simplistic, but it’s the best answer to prejudice and polarization. Only together can we stop the madness.
What does the play suggest about the danger of forgetting?
My own grandma had an expression: “Grow, don’t wither!” Whenever I’d bomb on a test at school or misplace my rain boots or have to pay a 5¢ fine at the library because I’d failed to return books on time, that was her advice. Deal with it, learn something, move on. I no longer have to worry about tests, rain boots, or fines at the library, but I’m still learning what life has to teach me. Unless one is mindful of and honest about the past, present, and future, even the painful stuff, withering happens.
What have you learned from writing short plays that you might carry into future work?
Short plays are both fun and challenging because everybody and everything must be essential and related. That’s good practice for any kind of writing. I’m working on a full-length play now (which will be my first), but I still love the short play form. Incidentally, my new full-length play will feature Mikey and Mags from The Sticky-Fingered Foodie, so I guess I’ll be carrying quite a bit into future work!
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The Sticky-Fingered Foodie
Tom Beattie’s The Sticky-Fingered Foodie is a compact collection of two related one-act plays, The Sticky-Fingered Foodie and Vinyl, linked by the exuberant, sharp-tongued figure of Grandma. The first play operates as a fast-moving comic farce. Mikey and Mags, a young couple who have been robbing food trucks, are hiding out in Grandma’s apartment when her unexplained disappearance brings Officer Kapgun uncomfortably close to their crimes. Beattie builds the comedy through verbal misdirection, food puns, escalating anxiety, and the contrast between Mikey’s nervousness and Mags’s cool sarcasm. The deliberately bare setting keeps the emphasis where it belongs, on dialogue and performance, while Grandma’s return shifts the story toward a larger concern with hunger, generosity, and the assumptions people make about one another.
Beneath its farcical surface, the title play gives Mikey a modest but effective moral arc. Grandma’s decision to donate food to an LGBTQ community program initially draws suspicion and crude remarks from him, but the encounter gradually forces him to see hunger as a real problem. His eventual observation that “being hungry sucks” is plainspoken, almost comically obvious, yet that simplicity makes it persuasive. He arrives at compassion through something he understands intimately: food. The play doesn’t abandon its comic instincts to deliver that point. Mikey and Mags remain flawed, funny, and self-interested, and their decision to find legitimate work grows naturally out of the same appetites and anxieties that got them into trouble.
Vinyl changes the rhythm considerably. Set shortly after the first play, it reduces the cast to Grandma and Miss Erica Teal Dysfunction, a young drag queen, and turns their conversation over a collection of disco records into a reflection on memory, queer history, violence, friendship, and survival. What begins as affectionate banter about Sylvester and other disco performers gradually reveals Grandma’s personal connection to that era and the painful memories she has attached to its music. The strongest passage comes when Miss E.D. tells her, “Life’s a vinyl record, Connie. Scratches and skips can happen, but unless you drop the needle, you’ll never hear the music.” The metaphor neatly expresses the companion play’s central idea: remembrance carries pain, but refusing memory also means surrendering the joy, community, and meaning bound up with it.
The two plays form a comic work with an unusually warm emotional trajectory. Beattie’s humor is broad, bawdy, topical, and frequently built around wordplay, but the recurring jokes also create continuity between the characters’ private appetites and the book’s wider interest in basic human needs. Grandma is the connective force. Her irreverence allows the book to move easily between bawdy jokes and serious subjects, while her generosity gives both stories their ethical center. Beattie explains in his closing comments that the project began as two related short plays centered on Grandma, later shaped by a news story about a food-truck robbery and a broadcast of Sylvester’s music. The finished book reflects that unlikely combination: part farce, part character comedy, part remembrance, and a celebration of fellowship, resilience, and the small acts through which people learn to recognize one another.
Pages: 109 | ISBN : 978-1737981299
The Importance of Being Earnest Enough
Paying homage to Oscar Wilde, Tom Beattie has written a one act play, The Importance of Being Ernest Enough. Fans of Oscar Wilde’s original will be won over with this modern-day rendition. In this clever tribute to Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Beattie re-imagines the 19th century upper-class social sphere of Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing and the women they are intended to marry. But there’s more than one twist in this tale; this caricature of upper-crust Britishness is set in the US and the characters have mobile phones, Facebook and instant access to rampant gossip. What’s more, all the main characters are gay with no intention of marrying their opposite sex intendeds.
Tom Beattie’s extraordinary and comical production will have readers entertained with scenes that have humor permeating every aspect of the production from dialogue to stage directions. The dialogue is confident and quick-witted with a dizzyingly fast pace. The puns and double-entendres are smart and hilarious, worthy of Wilde himself. This original work is unpredictable and rich with plot twists as the characters are rousing and imaginative. The stage direction notes give readers the chance to visualize how this production would look being performed by a full cast.
This play came with a bonus short scene in which the author is trying to teach his husband, David, how to meditate. Readers will laugh at the antics and back and forth banter between the two. It’s entertaining and amusing with Wildean nods to the political environment and the inevitability of aging.
The Importance of Being Ernest Enough is a fresh take on the classic by Oscar Wilde. Beattie’s version is modern, smart, engaging and hilarious and well worth a read. Those that have a passion for stage production or classics like Oscar Wilde will find something to laugh about and love in this play.
Pages: 121 | ASIN : B09LD1WRM9
A Master of Social Comedy
American Fries: A Queer Farce is a whimsical play about love, equality, and marriage in both a historical and contemporary setting. What was the inspiration for the setup to your plays?
Moliere is an old buddy of mine. We met in high school French class years ago and have kept in touch ever since. When the COVID 19 pandemic hit, we decided to shelter in place together and collaborate on a play. We wanted to include some of his tried-and-true tricks of the trade, e.g., mistaken identities, overheard conversations, mischievous servants, etc., but with a modern twist. To be honest, Moliere deserves all the credit. Most of my ideas got edited out.
Your characters were interesting and I loved following them. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
As a master of social comedy/satire/farce, Moliere’s characters tended to be more “types” than individuals, but they often had big hearts that steered them right in the end. I’m hoping that’s true of American Fries.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
As you note, my main theme is marriage equality. Those who say it’s “established law” in the U.S. so there’s no need to worry are wrong on both counts.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I’m currently working on a comedy of manners about the “fake news” phenomenon. Oscar Wilde is helping me out. (We ZOOM all the time.) Look for The Importance of Being Ernest Enough later this year.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
American Fries: A Queer Farce
![American Fries: A Queer Farce by [Tom Beattie]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41GZpxaGnbL.jpg)
American Fries: A Queer Farce is Tom Beattie’s fun play where he explores how Molière’s playwright style could have been if it had included some queerness in it. Marriage equality and same-sex love are the main aspects dealt with in his play, all done in a fun and hilarious way that will leave its readers constantly smiling and giggling at every turn of the page.
The book includes two different plays. The first one, American Fries, based in seventeenth-century Paris, follows the friends Bayonet and Heavyset as they conspire to find a way to pair and marry each other’s kids. However, the girls Crepsuzette and Anisette, and the boys Pirouette and Leatherette, may have some different plans of their own. Although it is a period play, it is told in a modern way with modern humor, making it very enjoyable to read. The second play included in the book, Once Married, goes back to modern day to follow the lives of Tom and David, a gay couple from the United States in their early sixties, with the deep wish of having the freedom to marry each other without fear.
The plays included in the book were fun and easy to read. Even though the book deals with serious themes such as same-sex marriage, the author expresses his story and his feelings in an entertaining and natural way. I was constantly smiling throughout the different plays, highly appreciating Tom Beattie’s humor. Even the names of the characters made me laugh every time that they appeared on the page, they had such an unique and creative touch to them. The stories told were not only funny but also endearing, being able to portray by the end the significance of companionship and love regardless of gender, a very powerful message in this day and age.
I found the first play, American Fries, to be unique and would love to see a longer one in the future with the same style of writing and humoristic attitude. The deep feelings of love are portrayed in a simple, yet powerful manner, allowing the reader to feel connected to the characters and understanding the depth of their emotions. I only wish that the plays had been longer, there is still some potential that can be explored further with the characters that were introduced throughout the story.
American Fries: A Queer Farce is a fast paced and easy read with entertaining humor and an overall imaginative and creative style. Author Tom Beattie gives readers such an endearing and enjoyable reading experience.
Pages: 143 | ASIN:
