NEW YORK (AP) — Richard Thomas has not one however two large footwear to fill when he goes out on the highway this summer time in a celebrated one-man present.
The Emmy Award winner and Tony Award nominee is portraying the nice American author Mark Twain in a play written and carried out for many years by the late Hal Holbrook.
Thomas instantly accepted the supply to star within the 90-minute “Mark Twain Tonight!” that excursions greater than a dozen states this summer time and fall earlier than questioning what he’d gotten himself into.
“I walked down to the street and I said, ‘Are you crazy? What are you out of your mind?’” he says, laughing. “I had to grapple with who’s the bigger fool — the man who says, ‘Yes, I’ll do it’ or the man that says, ‘No, I won’t’?”
Holbrook portrayed the favored novelist and humorist for greater than a half century beginning in 1954, making over 2,300 performances to a collective viewers of greater than 2 million. He and Thomas had been keen on one another and would see one another’s work.
The present mixes Twain’s speeches and passages from his books and letters to supply a multidimensional take a look at an American icon, who toured the U.S. with appearances.
“I’m going to feel very much like I’m not only following in Hal’s footsteps, but in Twain’s as well,” says Thomas, who started his profession as John-Boy Walton on TV’s “The Waltons” and have become a Broadway mainstay.
Thomas jokes that Holbrook had 50 years to settle into the position and he has solely a 12 months or so. “I have the advantage on him that he started when he was 30 and he was pretending to be an old man. I’m 74 so I’m right there. That’s the one area where I’m up on him.”
‘It’s time for Twain’
The brand new tour kicks off this week in Hartford, Connecticut — appropriately sufficient, one of many locations Twain lived — after which goes to Maryland, Iowa, Arkansas, North Carolina, Kansas, Tennessee, New York, New Jersey, Utah, California, Arizona, Alabama, Utah and Florida by Christmastime. Then in 2026 — the sixtieth anniversary of the Broadway premiere — it goes to Texas, Colorado, Wisconsin and Ohio.
“It’s time for Twain, you know? I mean, it’s always time for Twain, always. He’s always relevant because he’s utterly and completely us, with warts and all,” says Thomas.
The actor will journey with a stage supervisor and a trunk together with his costumes, however all the opposite components can be sourced regionally by the venues — like desks and chairs, giving every present native touches.
“There’s something about doing a show for people in their own community, in their theater that they support, that they raise money for. They’re not coming to you as tourists. You’re coming to them.”
Thomas has performed a one-man present earlier than — “A Distant Country Called Youth” utilizing Tennessee Williams letters — however that allowed him to learn from the script on stage. Right here he has no such assist.
“One of the keys is to balance the light and the shadow, how funny, how outrageous, the polemic and the darkness and the light. You want that balanced beautifully,” he says.
Twain represents America
Different actors — notably Val Kilmer and Jerry Hardin — have devised one-man exhibits in regards to the creator of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, who nonetheless manages to fascinate. A brand new biography of Twain by Ron Chernow got here out this 12 months, which Thomas is churning by.
Thomas sees Twain as representing America completely: “He just lets it all hang out there. He’s mean-spirited; he’s generous. He’s bigoted; he is progressive. He hates money; he wants to be the richest man in America. All of these fabulous contradictions are on display.”
Thomas has recently turn out to be a highway rat, touring in “Twelve Angry Men” from 2006-08, “The Humans” in 2018 and starring as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” from 2022-24.
Orin Wolf, CEO of tour producer NETworks Displays, bought to look at Thomas on the highway in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and says having him step into Twain will strengthen the theater neighborhood throughout the nation
“It’s so rare nowadays to have a true star of the road,” Wolf says, calling Thomas “a breed of actor and artist that they rarely make anymore.”
“I’m delighted to be supporting him and delighted that he’s chosen to do this because I think this is something he could also take on for hopefully many years,” he provides.
After Twain, Thomas will subsequent be seen on Broadway this spring reverse Renée Elise Goldsberry and Marylouise Burke in David Lindsay-Abaire’s new comedy, “The Balusters.”
However first there’s the eloquence and wry humor in a present about Twain that reveals he was typically a annoyed optimist when it got here to America.
“I think it reflects right now a lot of our frustration with how things are going,” says Thomas. “Will things ever be better and can things ever better? Or are we just doomed to just be this species that is going to constantly eat its own tail and are we ever going to move forward?”
