The Baron Would Be Proud: a storyteller's story

Mike Jack Stoumbos, a young Seattle playwright, brings you his debut narrative in the form of this fanciful folk tale which demonstrates the triumph of love against even the most daunting whimsy. With its cast of charming characters, historical anecdotes, literary allusions, and a fresh farce with each new day, The Baron Would Be Proud is certainly a story for storytellers everywhere. * * * A folk-tale set in early 19th century England, "The Baron Would Be Proud" tells the story of the tiny village of Adleship Isle, which is almost entirely unreachable. No one can figure out how to get into or out of the village, save for a veteran traveling merchant who has assumed the honorable duty of vacationing there every Christmas. Now, as fate would have it, another man, also traveling around the world, gets lost in a storm and stumbles blindly into Adleship Isle. As both the novice and the veteran are English gentlemen and well-to-do traveling merchants, they quickly discover that the minuscule village is barely big enough for the both of them. However, the narrator will tell you that's not what the story is about; it is about the young man named Julian who has never left Adleship Isle and who has grown quite smitten with the daughter of the mayor. In order to gain her attention, Julian boldly offers to put up the stranger and his servants for the winter weeks, and this stranger--a cheeky fellow who goes by the name of the Baron Pan Bordolo--decides that the only way to aptly repay the lad is to help him woo the lady.