The blog is going away but the reviews are not. You can find them here in the online print edition.
Home > ATLarts > Archives > 2008 > September > 16 > Entry
Review: Huck Finn’s ‘Big River’ @ Theatrical Outfit
THEATER REVIEW "Big River: the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Sundays. 2:30 p.m. Sept. 20 and Oct. 4. Through Oct. 5. $10 - $30. Theatrical Outfit, The Balzer Theater at Herren's. 84 Luckie St., Atlanta. 678-528-1500, www.theatricaloutfit.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s a great story: an archetypal American tale of buddies bonding, of leaving home to find yourself, of finding a moral compass not from society’s status quo or religious hypocrisy but from sympathizing with your fellow man.
And it’s an exciting show: two dozen actors and musicians in a well-crafted song-and-dance extravaganza that rarely stops rolling.
But “Big River: the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” — a big opening for Theatrical Outfit’s 32nd season — is a shallow musical that cheerfully creates a dichotomy where a show is either “fun” or “challenging” but can’t be both.
With a book by William Hauptman, “Big River” had its Broadway premiere in 1985 and won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
As its story flows down the muddy Mississippi in the 1840s, picking up scenes from Mark Twain’s vast novel, the emphasis shifts as a free-spirited boy’s giddy adventure (read: America’s adolescence) crashes against the brutality and inhumanity of the antebellum South.
Yet for a musical that reaches down to the darkest pathology of American history, Hauptman is careful never to make us feel uncomfortable. Even the period language, including whites using the “N” word, feels sanitized for polite consumption. The comic and clever bits hit their mark; the horrors, given inadequate weight, never supply a counterbalance.
Roger Miller, a country-music songsmith known for the hit ballad “King of the Road,” wrote both music and lyrics for his all-Americana “Big River” score, dipping into a range of styles, with bluegrass, ragtime and a half dozen others in the mix, all anchoring and amplifying Twain’s world. The songs are not hard to sing, although like much of contemporary Broadway, they are dull and drum-beat heavy and take no chances. The big numbers especially don’t feel handmade. Whether by lack of musical inspiration or by some 1980s Zeitgeist, they sound as if they’d been focus-grouped into blandness.
Elsewhere, Miller’s country-western folk idiom is more honest and thus works wonderfully in the subtle music that accompanies some of the narration, inspired by the unadorned sturdiness of white folk tunes and the pathos of black spirituals.
So “Big River” is another case of a good, well-meaning, problematic play that shines by a superior production. Heidi Cline directs at Theatrical Outfit, thoroughly energized, never a blurry moment. Jeff McKerley’s old-timey Vaudeville choreography is a hammy delight. The sets, designed by Michael Halad, are mostly hammered-together wooden planks on several levels. They evoke docks and old frame houses. The gap in the middle is the wide Mississippi. Ken Yunker’s lighting is especially poetic across the spectrum of night scenes.
And the cast is strong. Eric Moore is magnificent as Jim — burly, raw and tender — the runaway slave who is escaping to a free state and earnestly expects to find a job and save enough money to buy back his wife and two children, who’d been sold separately.
As narrator, Huck (Brandon O’Dell) is a callow lad, not quite a compelling companion, eager to find a place in the world, reckless but smart. He’s not like the other boys — he’s going somewhere.
As Huck’s father, Tom Key (Theatrical Outfit’s executive artistic director) first rages then implodes in a moonshine stupor against the “Guv’ment.” More sharply than the others, it’s a song that defines a character, a small masterpiece of musical portraiture.
Hauptman’s tip-toeing around that bummer slavery discussion helps explains why the King (Tom Key again) and the Duke (McKerley), con-men fleeing their victims, get to hijack the musical.
Huck slips into the background as he finds this rapscallion duo a lot of fun — as do we, for a while. Fake Shakespeare to entertain Arkansas hicks, and the lengths they’ll go to swindle a family of their fortune make for fine entertainment. Wild-eyed and charismatic, Key and McKerley eat up the roles. For better and worse, it’s as much, or more, their story as Huck and Jim’s.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
Comments
By Edward Cutler
September 21, 2008 10:02 PM | Link to this
I saw Big River three times before: twice the award winning Broadway production with deaf actors and their interpreters and once the Broadway Across America touring version in Columbus. Therefore, we stopped in at the Balzer theatre to see Big River on our trip the purpose of which was to see Rob Evan in Les Miserables.
The Atlanta production captured the spirit of the Broadway production, and to me was far better than the weaker touring version. The cast was good and entertaining, and the theatre was wonderful. The show accomplished its goals. Two allusions to deafness reminded me of the original New York production.