HARTFORD STAGE

World Premier

Mark Twain's The Adventures of

TOM SAWYER

April 1 - May 9, 2010

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Adapted for the Stage by Laura Eason

Directed by Jeremy B. Cohen

 

Reviewed by Donna Bailey-Thompson

Tom Sawyer: Beguiling Family Fare

The play is well-written, the cast has energy to burn, the set earns praise for its ingenuity, the costumes enhance the characters. Thanks to Huck Finn finding a dead cat and Tom Sawyer draping a dead rat around his neck, there is no doubt these are boys who will be boys. Nevertheless, during the first act (April 7), something seemed "off." Maybe an ingredient was needed to lift the play, perhaps music because there were several places where singing and/or dancing would have seemed natural. But through Googling, I learned that in April-May 2001, a musical Tom Sawyer closed after 34 previews and 21 performances. Maybe it was something as simple as the timing being somewhat off because Act Two (after getting an overwrought nightmare scenario out of its system) zipped along. There was drama, humor, perilous adventure, suspense, special effects, and the cast still had energy to burn.


Through cunning lighting (Robert Wierzel) and real candles, a maze of caves are created, surely as complicated as Howe’s Caverns – well, Tom and Becky are lost long enough for the townspeople to believe they are dead. Evidently some of the underground chambers are vast because Tom and Becky’s voices echo – an inspired plus. Bats are disturbed and the frantic beating of their wings is even scarier than Hitchcock’s possessed birds because these bats are within the same blackness that the audience is part of.

The three leads beguile, especially Tim McKiernan as Tom, making his professional theater debut. Regardless of whatever madcap idea Tom embraces, Tim surrenders to the moment and makes it real. Casey Predovic’s Huckleberry Finn is ready to aid and abet Tom’s whims and Louisa Krause’s sweet Becky Thatcher points up how very much on the cusp of young adulthood these three are poised. Huck feels threatened by Tom and Becky’s mutual crush until Tom mentions that after he and Becky are married, nothing will change because Huck will, of course, live with them. The audience’s knowing murmur gave Tom’s throw-away line extended life.

The innocence of the 1840s in small towns along the Mississippi oozes air-brushed nostalgia. When Becky exclaims about the graffiti left by earlier visitors to the cave, “They came here before we were born!” Tom’s musing is brief: “As long ago as that?” His intellectual curiosity is stunted due to suffering so appealingly with adolescent narcissism.

Daniel Ostling’s scenic design, engineered to within a micro inch of disastrous collisions, emits homespun aw shucks just as his Metamorphoses exuded sleek sophistication. An interior church scene is enlivened by life-size puppets that actors subtly animate as they sit side-by-side on hard wooden pews. Ilona Somogyi’s costumes are appropriately folksy and move beautifully; they would have thrilled Agnes de Mille.

A special shout-out to whomever designed the program cover: there they are – Huck, Tom, and Becky – facing a white-washed fence. Their adventures are appropriate family fare.


In addition to this World Premier of Laura Eason’s newly commissioned adaptation of Mark Twain’s classic novel (sponsored by The Hartford), there are related city-wide celebrations of Mark Twain’s death and the 175th anniversary of his birth.

For Hartford Stage tickets,
call 860-527-5151 or visit www.hartfordstage.org.
For information about related celebrations,
contact the Mark Twain House & Museum at 860-280-3130 or visit www.MarkTwainHouse.org

 


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