Holbrook earns respect, enthusiasm with ‘Twain’

It would be easy to come away from Hal Holbrook's one-man "Mark Twain Tonight!" with a sense of mere respect. The Oscar-nominated actor is 83 and has been doing, for 54 years, this ode to Samuel Clemens that has the sort of literary halo bound to make English teachers happy.

But on Saturday night, as part of the New York Stage & Beyond series, Holbrook earned as much enthusiasm as respect. The evening had an air of spontaneity. It would have been easy to assume that Holbrook was performing the show for the first time.

The script (periodically revised throughout the years) is a compilation of essays, speeches, manuscripts and myth. The performance is simply Holbrook -- who has aged into his aged make-up -- commanding the stage at a lectern, occasionally fiddling with a huge high-back chair and a period-table containing a few this-and-thats.

As a writer, Holbrook does a smart thing in making almost the entire first act an evening of what seems to be frivolous humor. In the second, Twain offers some serious warnings about patriotism, integrity and courage -- the willingness to stand alone when necessary.

It would have been easy to make this character a pontificating bore, but Holbrook has made him more of an amusingly feisty, crusty old hoot who happens to have a few wise words to share. Sample: "Nothing needs reforming as much as other people's habits." "Congress is the best volume of men money could buy." "I hate poor people. Poor people are the cause of poverty in this country, and I am against poverty." Well, you get the idea.

Particularly poignant was the excerpt from "Huckleberry Finn" in which Holbrook played a slew of characters, always through the eyes of Twain, never through the eyes of the characters themselves.

Holbrook's been perfecting his craft for a long time, and the result is his work has never seemed easier. He's a hard-working craftsman who has earned his way into greatness.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.