February 2012 Review by Joe Stead
Mark Twain: Patriot, Teacher, Philosopher
"There ought to be more Sundays, they come in handy." Amen to that sentiment, Mr. Twain! While my Sundays are not typically afforded to time spent in church pews, I found the wit and wisdom of that great American scribe to be a warm and homey companion as I descended to the basement of St. Bonaventure for Saint Sebastian Players' current World Premiere. The title of this work, "Mark Twain: Patriot, Teacher, Philosopher" may be a bit misleading, although it is generously informed by the author of "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn".
Producer/Adapter
John Oster has structured this pleasantly entertaining collection
around Twain's cleverly homespun "The Diaries of Adam and
Eve," which also served as one third of the Bock and Harnick
musical "The Apple Tree" in the mid 60's. We watch
with delight as history and humanity's first couple discover with
fresh eyes all the wonders, trials and tribulations of life, love,
desire, parenting and death, all in Mark Twain's singularly wry voice.
We meet the real life author, too, the subject or victim, we find, of a vigorous arsenal of slander and supposition in a failed bid for Governor of New York. Branded as everything from "The Infamous Perjurer" and "Montana Thief" (who maintained he had never even been to Montana) to "Body Snatcher" and "The Delirium Tremens," the former Samuel Clemens was the object of baseless charges and yellow newspaper journalism. Mark Twain may never have made it to the Governor's Mansion, but perhaps this experience contributed to his own dramatic imagination.
The astute Twain also offered some of the most vivid and colorful literary observations of his era. One can forgive Adapter Oster the sin of omission here on the grounds that any complete collection of the writings of Mr. Twain would have been impractical in any theatrical context. And while I might have liked a bit more of a unifying context to intertwine the assembled stories, Oster and Director Stephen F. Murray have done a commendable and entertaining job of bringing Twain's sly spirit back to life.
An obvious choice to tie the five selections together here is the use of traditional folk music and spirituals, performed by onstage musician/performers. As fitting as it is to Twain's Americana, the music is also the weakest element here. Murray has tried to create a folksy, audience friendly sing-along environment, which is nobler in vision than in execution, especially since the on stage talent must compete with their non-skilled spectators. My first suggestion would be to scrap the audience participation and let the cast do the job that we have paid to see and hear them do.
That
caveat aside, there is some beautiful work from Dylan Parkes and
Kelsi Karch as Adam and Eve, respectively. The natural
innocence of these twin "experiments" is truly hilarious
and ultimately poignant as we watch their rite of passage through the
perilous maze of life. Eve, ever the brain of the two, is
constantly naming things, much to Adam's dismay. She's also
quite the talker, something her male counterpart later admits was an
irritant but that he later came to love and cherish about Eve.
The epiphany here is how greatly two seemingly opposite individuals
can come to depend on and care for one another so deeply. Would
that the remainder of their descendents could learn and benefit from
that lesson.
Parkes and Karch are delightfully appealing and natural in their dramatic duet. Parkes' Adam is so benignly ignorant of his own offspring he can't quite figure out what kind of species it is. Fish...Kangaroo...Bear? "I pity the poor noisy little animal," he allows, although his thoughts of having it stuffed and mounted don't register too well with the more maternal Eve. Just as Adam comes to eventually love this strange little creature, so too does Karch's more enlightened Eve express her love for Adam, even if she cannot fully understand why. "Love cannot explain itself," she tell us, "It doesn't have to."
Weaving back and forth between this refreshingly non-condescending take on the Book of Genesis is its author himself and a couple of his other short stories. Brian Hurst's rugged and gently sardonic Twain is a younger but no less colorful a picture of the great American "Patriot/Teacher/Philosopher" than we are accustomed to seeing. We get Twain's view on gossip, arrogance, war and the invention of the telephone, none quite as potent as Adam and Eve in their later bittersweet monologues, but enough to remind us of the limitless bounty of this prolific author's quintessential mind and imagination. Saint Sebastian Players presents "Mark Twain: Patriot, Teacher, Philosopher" through March 11, 2012. For more information on this show, please visit the Theatre In Chicago Mark Twain page.
About Joe Stead
Joe
Stead has enjoyed a lifelong passion for the theatre, which has
involved acting, directing, producing, designing and reviewing since
1984. He served as founder, producer and Artistic Director of
Curtain Up Productions in Baltimore, Maryland and Four Star Players
in Tampa, Florida. Favorite productions have included "Life
With Father," "Deathtrap," "The Odd Couple,"
"The Miracle Worker," "Brighton Beach Memoirs,"
"You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" and
"Godspell". He has also performed leading roles in
"Fiddler on the Roof," "Pippin," "The
Phantom of the Opera," "The Front Page," and most
recently as Hucklebee in "The Fantasticks" for Waukegan
Community Players. Joe holds a degree in Commercial Art from
Tampa Technical Institute. As a critic, he has reviewed
everything from Broadway to community theatre and major regional
theatres throughout the United States including the Kennedy Center in
Washington, D.C., Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey, Goodspeed Opera
House in Connecticut, and the Asolo Theatre in Sarasota, Florida.
Since 1998, he has been a proud resident of Chicago, the greatest theatre city in America. He served for two years as Theatre Editor for College News and Central Newspapers. He created the website Steadstyle Chicago in 2000 to showcase the city's outstanding and diverse theatre scene. Joe was proud to serve alongside a distinguished panel of theatre professionals as a judge for two seasons of Speaking Ring Theatre's "Vitality" Festival of original short plays. His most fulfilling role, in addition to reviewer and all-around theatre fanatic, was as director of the 2007 production of Peter Shaffer's "Equus" at Actors Workshop (now Redtwist) Theatre, which was nominated for five Joseph Jefferson Award Citations and won for Best Actor (Peter Oyloe).