by Joan Macalpine

27 October - 5 November 2005

This production was chosen to mark the celebration of 60 years of continous drama in Caterham starting with the Caterham Players back in 1945, and continued today by the Miller Centre Players.

The play, like the novel is a rich, bawdy 18th century romp and concerns the various misadventures of Tom Jones, the adopted son of of Squire Allworthy. The squire eventually becomes tired of the scandals that Tom seems unable to avoid and banishes him to cause trouble elsewhere. Tom's troubles escalate as he becomes entangled with three women at once: Jenny Waters, a lady of warm heart and dubious virtue, Mrs Fitzpatrick, a society lady seeking diversion from her oafish husband and Sophia Western, with whom Tom is truly in love but unable to marry because of the questionable nature of his birth. After many tribulations and a close brush with the hangman's noose, the good, of course, end happily and the bad unhappily. This is fiction after all!