Review: MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! at National Theatre

According to an interview Richard Thomas gave to DC Theater Arts, Hal Holbrook's estate asked him to consider playing Mark Twain in the one-man show that Holbrook compiled for himself back in 1954 when he was 29. Their idea was a good one; after a brief stop in DC, this excellent production has moved on to North Carolina.

Thomas, now 74 (how can John Boy be 74?), is older that Twain was as he speaks directly to the audience, retelling family stories, philosophizing about American ways, playing Huck, nailing politicians, extrapolating on how money has corrupted the nation. The onstage Twain says he's 70, which sets the play in 1905. The degree to which everything Twain thinks about America would be true if he said it today marks the importance of Twain's role in American culture; and the speed with which he'd be cancelled if he were here to say it in 2025 can't be calculated.

For example, to support his notion that “man is the most interesting jackass,” Twain points out that the ark Noah came up with was A/ too small to accommodate 146,000 animal species and two billion species of insects and B/ not particularly seaworthy, lacking, as it did, such basics as a sail or a rudder. And in an excellent passage from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck learns that the only way to save his friend Jim, the slave, is to do what every preacher and widow lady has all his life told him never to do: lie. And, of course, when lying works like a charm, Huck rejoices. This represents Twain the ironIst. Yet Twain is never bitter; he's matter of fact when he avers that he “. . . had not expected the monarchy to come so soon, but it is here.” He said that some time before 1905; it is only bitter to hear it start to come true in 2025.

As with Holbrook, Mark Twain TonIght! still doesn't feel like one is with an audience in a theatre—the illusion feels as if this wise and witty old gent has decided to share things with you and you alone. But Thomas' acting skills underpin all 90 minutes of the show. His whole body changes along with his voice and he drops 60 years when he takes on the persona of Huck; his shoes seem to disappear. Mark Twain disappears when an “uncle” tells a ghost story to a group of children. And when Mark Twain, the former riverboat pilot, returns to recall the beauty of the Big River and the trees along her shores, an audiences glimpses him seeing what it can now also see. Imperceptibly shifting with these moments and moods is Anthony Pearson's subtle lighting which considers both whatever Twain is describing or seeing as well as how he feels or thinks about it. Great craft yields great theatre.