theatremontgomery

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Monday, November 14, 2011

 "An Evening With Mark Twain"

Brought in for just one short weekend, Kurt H. Sutton's interpreter of Samuel Clemens as Mark Twain in “An Evening With Mark Twain “graced the stage with the wit and wisdom, and frequent spot-on criticisms of American culture, society, and politics.

Mark Twain is revered as America's greatest humorist, and was known later in his life for remarkable speaking engagements across the land where he entertained the crowds by giving excerpts from his books and stories, and reminiscing on his life.

So it is here: the setting is his "parlor" -- a carpet, a wing-back armchair, a lectern, a couple of instruments, and some other props -- from which he recites, sings songs, passes judgment on several sacred cows, and entertains us with his quick wit, sly grin, and frequent forays into folk and "spiritual" music that Clemens loved to sing and play to entertain his friends.

Originally devised as Mark Twain Tonight by Hal Holbrook many decades ago, an entire cottage industry has emerged with actors portraying Twain. Mr. Sutton has been on the circuit for over six years, and clearly has a comfort in the role, a command of a wealth of material, selections of which vary from performance to performance, and a demeanor that gets an audience to respond as to a long-time friend [though it took a story or two for the audience to respond appreciatively to the  old-fashioned style of storytelling as the audiences today are used to a quick “punchline”].

We have to listen carefully to sometimes get the joke -- a turn of phrase, a clever pun, or a sly off-hand remark delivered with a shrug of the shoulder or a double-take or a well-timed delayed comment.

If we listen , there is no doubt why Mark Twain's works have continued to captivate readers in three centuries; not only are his subjects timeless or at least as relevant today as when they were first penned, but Twain's prose descriptions of rivers and nature and human foibles are rendered precisely to create vivid and lasting pictures.

And his humor always hits its target. For example, he once told someone that he came across "the ugliest woman I ever saw", but the next day when her sister was around, he "now withdraws the statement". Or that "I can cut out bad habits, but not moderate them", concluding that a person with no bad habits is a "moral pauper". Or calling Congress the "Grand old national asylum for the helpless", stating further that we have "the best Congress money can buy" -- sentiments which met with approving laughter from the audience. -- And his rambling story of "Grandfather and the Ram" told by Sutton as the town drunk who falls asleep in a drunken stupor before finishing the tale, gets funnier with each section as the storyteller gets distracted by the details of the story. Which keeps him from “walking a straight line”

In Act II, Sutton spends much of the time with selections from Huckleberry Finn, and plays all the roles, stating further that this book particularly has been banned by some group or another ever since its first printing, and wisely noting that "nothing sells as well as a banned book". -- Huck's moral dilemma is, of course, that he doesn't turn in the runaway slave, Jim, and thinks he will go to hell for it, but that he can't quite figure out why anyone could enslave another; the choice of going to "the good place" where he would be always in the presence of do-gooders & hypocrites is unbearable for Huck, so he prefers "the other place" for his eternity.

This Mark Twain gave us a lot to think about at a time when slogans and moralizing have little substance; we could well take notice from the master.

Posted by Michael P. Howley at 10:17 PM