The Medicine Man

A miserable, worthless piece of desert driftwood, a fork-tongued, lily-livered, puffed-up popinjay—snake-oil salesman, card sharp, pick-pocket, claim jumper, medicine show man, con man and a number-one coward." Those are a few of the terms that Aggie uses to describe Sagamore, the hero of our play. It appears that she doesn't think very highly of him—you can't much blame her. Sagamore walked out 10 years ago to get a drink and didn't bother to come back, leaving his wife and 4-year-old daughter, Louise, to shift for each other. Now, by one of those sheer coincidences that you find only in carefree, happy farces (like those by Shakespeare and Molière), Sagamore strolls into a desert hotel owned and operated by Aggie. After a hilarious broom-swatting fight, Aggie has just about persuaded Sagamore that he's not welcome. Louise—now in her early teens—begs him to stay. In the meantime, Senor Vega, the richest man in the valley, brings his daughter to the hotel in search of a doctor to cure the strange malady which has caused her to lose her voice. The old doctor has just died, and Sagamore decides to use the doctor's bag of tools to cure the girl and gain the reward. Vega, who is nobody's fool, suspects that Sagamore is not the skilled doctor he pretends to be; he tells Sagamore to cure his daughter or hang from the nearest tree. This plot should sound vaguely familiar, for it is loosely based on possibly the funniest play ever written—Molière's The Doctor in Spite of Himself. Molière would undoubtedly be delighted to see his play transferred to the American Wild West because it fits as comfortably as a pair of faded blue jeans. The Medicine Man is recommended for all groups. Community theatres, universities and high schools have found this to be a well-plotted, hilarious play.