Musicals and Mark: Ever the Twain shall meet.
There was The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, all set to toe-tappin' tunes.
Which brings us to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a Broadway bomb (34 performances in 2001) that deserved a better fate (Ken Ludwig's book was certainly fixable) as evidenced by a spirited production of a spotty show launching the Super Summer Theatre season at Spring Mountain Ranch State Park.
Twain's classic is still a high-flyin' tale, but this adaptation takes its time getting airborne, to its detriment. Blame the book, which, despite the unflagging exuberance of the players, idles too long on not much of anything except Tom managing to buffalo his friends into whitewashing the fence for him.
But once basso-profundo badass Carlos Mathis-Johnson arrives as lying, murdering Injun Joe, the play starts percolating in its familiar story of irrepressible, rambunctious youth (Tom impishly aggravating schoolmaster Lemuel Dobbins and the Rev. Sprague), tight friendship (Tom and Huck), budding romance (Tom and Becky Thatcher), family dynamics (Tom, his exasperated but loving Aunt Polly and smart-alecky half-brother Sid), courtroom tension (town drunk Muff Potter falsely accused of the murder committed by Joe) and climactic action (Tom, Becky and Huck lost in McDougal's cave and confronting the vengeful Joe, whom Tom testified against after witnessing the murder).
After the sluggish start, Philip Shelburne revs up the show to a full gallop, directing with the unbridled passion the piece requires, but he can't overcome the book's mistake of making Tom a 14-year-old. Twain never specified Tom's age, but he was clearly a younger boy, making his affection for frogs and digging up worms a bit unseemly. Hyperkinetic Steve Huntsman as Tom, though certainly enthusiastic, overcompensates for the discrepancy with excessive boyish ardor, matched by Brandon Berrett Albright's Huck. (When Tom dismisses a former date as "so perky she makes me want to throw up all over myself," it's impossible to imagine anyone could outdo him on the spunk-o-meter.)
They're fun, if not quite believable in a book that fails them not only age-wise, but in giving their friendship short shrift, Huck little more than an afterthought until late in the show. Where Albright breaks through brilliantly, employing all of the character's innocently rough-hewn charm, is Huck discovering the thrill of learnin' in "I Can Read," with the marvelous Annette Houlihan Verdolino as his tutor, the Widow Douglas.
But believability takes another hit in the climactic struggle—it's nearly inconceivable that Tom and Huck, drawn by Twain as boys, could wrestle with Injun Joe mano a mano.
Among the supporting cast, Dee Drenta is a warmly likable Aunt Polly, Kelly Albright brings virtuous radiance to Becky, and leather-lunged Keith Dotson is a hallelujah hurricane as the Rev. Sprague.
Especially effective is Mathis-Johnson's blackhearted Injun Joe, imbued by the actor with a dark electricity. Bandana-wearing and knife-wielding, he is a coldly efficient embodiment of evil, a stark counterpoint to Tom and Huck's indefatigable goodness.
If there's a countrified, two-step sameness to Don Schlitz's score, as performed by the kickin', all-female Killian's Angels, at least it's a foot-stompin' hootenanny (the hootenanniest being "Ain't Life Fine") with a couple of tender exceptions, such as Tom and Becky's duet, "To Hear You Say My Name." And Suzanne Childers' choreography—excellent as always—is high-steppin' exuberance married to rhythmic precision.
Evan A. Bartoletti's horseshoe-shaped, turntable-style set is a multipurpose marvel, playing a church, a courtroom, a cave, Tom's house and the Missouri countryside.
What ultimately saves The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—and makes it a tidy match for the open-air style of Super Summer Theatre—is its all-American buoyancy. This is a production so sweetly determined to entertain that it largely overcomes its narrative deficiencies in the name of pure fun.
Tom and tomfoolery: Ever the Twain shall meet.