By Marilyn Lester***When the esteemed actor Hal Holbrook decided to write Mark Twain Tonight! and portray one of America’s most iconic authors and humorists, he had big shoes to fill…but fill them he did, taking the show around the country from 1959, to Broadway in 1966 (winning a Tony for Best Actor) through over 2,300 performances until his retirement in 2017 (he died in January 2021 at age 95).
Now Richard Thomas has assumed the role, and he’s filled two big pairs of shoes—Twain’s and Holbrook’s—decidedly splendidly. And like his predecessor, it seems he was born to play Twain. At a benefit performance of Mark Twain Tonight! at The Town Hall, Thomas was dazzling.
After Holbrook’s 2017 retirement, The Mark Twain Tonight! Trust was created to continue the actor’s legacy, and Richard Thomas was selected as the first (and only) authorized performer of the piece. He was the perfect choice. Thomas, who has had his own prolific career, and is now 75, is at the perfect age to play Twain. He brings the right temperament to the role with abundant talent and the remarkable timing needed to hit the marks of a piece that might appear rather unassuming, but is pretty demanding, particularly when it comes to the baked-in humor. Thomas has been touring he show, and The Town Hall evening was a special performance for the Entertainment Community Fund, a 
tough audience with fellow show biz types populating it. But the admiration was apparent as Thomas brought Twain to life through his own lens. The irony is that Samuel Clemens developed his own persona in his Mark Twain alter ego, which he exploited liberally and intermittently for 43 years on the lecture circuit, beginning in the late 1860s..
When Holbrook wrote the script, he wisely and cleverly constructed it with plenty of humor and laughs to begin, easing into social commentary and finishing with “the Twain they’d been expecting all along: with warm, whimsical, memories of childhood.” Over the years, Holbrook also developed alternate passages for the script, adaptable to the politics and social issues of the day, also targeted to his specific audience makeup. This iteration, crafted with creative consultant Michael Wilson, hit on many contemporary issues, solidly delivered by Thomas, and in one strong segment, followed the Holbrook decision to address racial issues by reading verbatim a passage from Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Here the young Huck faces a dilemma concerning the runaway slave, Jim, choosing a moral resolution rather than a legal one. Thomas was unflinching when delivering the “N” word, conveying, in character, the intention of Twain’s own message to do the right thing.
Kindred spirits, Holbrook drew from Twain’s writings, but also portrayed him through his own views o
n political hypocrisy, media sensationalism and governmental overreach, via the satirical voice of Twain. In creating Mark Twain Tonight! Holbrook also recited from Twain works such as The War Prayer. In taking on Mark Twain Tonight!, Thomas continues Holbrook’s commitment and fidelity to Twain’s societal observations and critiques. What’s cleverly created is an “everything old is new again” wonder that some things never change; and what work we still have to do about it. The authenticity of Thomas’ portrayal added strength to that notion.
So strong was Thomas’ performance it was easy to believe we were attending the lecture by Twain himself. The wit Twain once humorously said in an interview, “It is my custom to keep on talking until I get the audience cowed.” One can imagine Thomas delivering that line with a nod and a wink, but the truth is, from the get-go, he had us in the palm of his hand and kept us there, with dynamism of movement across the stage, and the conviction of a charismatic auteur and orator. Long may Thomas bring the marvelous Mark Twain to life across the country. We need them both.
Cartoon: Henry Blackburn in the New York GRAPHIC, November 5, 1873, from the Dave Thomson collection.
