Suture Fancy
Suture Fancy was a follies-style benefit variety revue written by Ken Bradbury for Passavant Area Hospital, in the same vein as his other Passavant follies. There is no through-line plot: a large amateur cast alternates standard-songbook musical numbers and parody send-ups with comedy sketches and emcee bits, building to a full-company finale. The numbers are loosely tied together by a recurring "censor" — a librarian, Miriam Prem, introduced as the chief librarian of the Pasadena Public Library and in town with her staff for a librarians' convention, who keeps trying to shut the show down as "objectionable." The medical-pun title (Suture Fancy = "suits your fancy") fits a Passavant Hospital benefit and its surgical / Frankenstein sketch material. The full record of this show — cast, year, and exact running order — has not been recovered, but the show survives as a roughly two-hour camcorder recording, preserved below.
Songs
The song running order below is approximate (sampled across the two-hour tape, not an exact program order). The four standards transcribe near-verbatim from the recording's audio; the parody numbers are grounded in clearly-heard signature lines, but their exact titles are parody adaptations rather than the original song titles.
- Comedy Tonight (from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) — the opening number, sung by the toga-costumed ensemble seen in the first frames ("Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears… something for everyone, coming tonight… we're a society of livers, liars and clowns… tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight").
- Parody love song to a librarian ("Marian" / "Mary-in") — tied to the censor framing ("I love you madly, madly, madder than my Mary-in… heaven help us, if the library caught on fire… mad about my Mary-in").
- "Some Enchanted Evening"-style librarian serenade ("Now in the moonlight, a man could sing it… a fellow would know that his darling had heard every word of his song… I need you madly, mad about my Mary-in").
- "Mack the Knife"-style parody — in the Frankenstein / surgical sketch ("Nobody touch me, I'm sterile… bring the saw, the drill, the bumping hammer, and the screwdriver… It's a knife, it's a knife, it's a knife… step down, Frankie, baby, come and sing for the people").
- I Love Paris (Cole Porter) — "I love Paris in the springtime… in the fall… in the winter when it drizzles… in the summer when it sizzles, I love Paris."
- Fascinating Rhythm (George & Ira Gershwin) — "Fascinating rhythm, won't you stop picking on me… oh, how I long to be the man I used to be."
- Second Hand Rose (parody, near the finale) — "I never get a single thing that's new… everyone knows that I'm just second-hand Rose, from second-hand Avenue."
Production Notes
- A full-length camcorder recording survives in the Foundation archive as Suture Fancy.mp4 (2.24 GB / 2,236,763,962 bytes) — a roughly two-hour capture (duration about 2:00:04, 640×480 standard-definition camcorder video). The archive's upload log maps this exact file to the YouTube video linked above (
oAhBa0iWlFw), published as "Suture Fancy — Ken Bradbury." - The recording is a raw tape-to-file transfer: it opens on a black screen carrying a VCR on-screen-display overlay ("VCR / SP / CH 3"), confirming a VCR-to-file capture, and carries no on-screen title cards, no program or credit text, and no end credits. The recording itself names no director, music director, or cast on screen.
- Staging is a school-auditorium-style proscenium with a hardwood stage and a red velvet main curtain; numbers play both in front of the closed curtain (skits, emcee bits) and on the open stage with set pieces.
- Format is a variety revue mixing musical numbers and comedy with no plot. The connective tissue between numbers is a recurring "censor" framing device: a librarian character, Miriam Prem (introduced as chief librarian of the Pasadena Public Library), who repeatedly tries to stop the show, calling it "objectionable."
- Verified numbers and scenes include a Rockettes-style kickline of roughly 20 performers; an ensemble in toga / Greek-style costumes (orange/peach short togas) standing with hands behind their backs (the Comedy Tonight opener); a hospital-themed number with performers in surgical scrubs around a draped gurney; a period / Victorian skit (a woman in a bonnet and long dress reading from a book opposite a man in a vest and ruffled shirt); two-person comedy skits including a rustic / overalls bit; and solo emcee turns in a tuxedo in front of the curtain.
- Confirmed comedy sketches include a Mother Goose "nursery rhyme time" bit ("Little Miss Muffet… sat on her tuffet eating her curds and whey"); the censor / librarian framing scenes; sailors mopping the stage with buckets; a lost-stranger / bad-directions bit; and a Little-Bo-Peep "you've lost your sheep" bit.
- The finale is a full-company curtain call of roughly fifty-plus performers spread across the stage in front of a large painted face / cat-style backdrop set piece.
- This is a distinct Passavant Area Hospital follies, separate from the three documented ones: the 1999 Ballad of Dead-Eye Doc, the 2002 Pazzamatazz, and the 2010 What the Blazes.
- No script, program, cast list, or journal for this title was found in the archive, and the recording has no title cards or program text. The name "Suture Fancy" survives only as the recording's filename — and never appears on screen — so the cast and year could not be recovered, and the song running order is approximate. The musical numbers listed above were recovered from the recording's audio: the four standards (Comedy Tonight, I Love Paris, Fascinating Rhythm, Second Hand Rose) transcribe near-verbatim, while the parody numbers are identified from clearly-heard signature lines.