Winter 2003

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February, 2003

This month marks Hal Holbrook's 78th birthday. We all know that Hal almost single-handedly kept the solo show alive with his "Mark Twain Tonight!" show, which he has been performing now for 39 incredible years. In fact, he's been doing Twain far longer than Twain himself did Twain. According to Jane McCone, director of the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira (NY) College: "Hal Holbook is Mark Twain. His research is impeccable; he works hard to get the delivery correct; he tries to educate through his performances. This man has made it his career to deliver Mark Twain to three generations of audiences. We hold him in high regard." The "we" being other Twain scholars of which there is no shortage. Twain literally defines late 19th century American literature.

Holbrook figures he has already reached his 2,000th performance. He won a Tony award back in 1966 during his second Broadway incarnation of the show. He says he's the only actor from that era still performing the same role, and he takes pride in that. He also takes pride in his interest in Twain and Twain's works. While not a scholar by trade, he is certainly one by nature. He loves reading and re-reading the novels and short stories, the newpaper columns and the lectures Twain published. It's quite a journey for a man who began playing the role in public school assemblies on tour in a 1954 Chevy.

In his performance, Holbrook strives for authenticity and impersonation. He's always played Twain as a man in his early 70's. His shows make use of set pieces, sound and lights and every other extra he can conjure up. His use of cigar smoke is imaginative and quite clever, as are his mannerisms that he adopted from seeing Twain on early sielnt newsreels. While no known recording of Twain's voice exists, several descriptions of it are extant. He tries hard to be faithful to the description of it as "a little coffie grinder in a corpse."

Holboork readily admits he took to performing Twain because it was a ready made job opportunity and he had a family to raise and bills to pay. What he did not realize is that it would become his life's work. And it's good work, if you can get it, he says.

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January, 2003

Academy award winning actress Ellen Burstyn is about to premiere in a new solo show adaptation of Alan Gurganus' bestselling 1994 novel, The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All". It will premiere at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre in early February. Burstyn plays the 99 year-old Lucy Marsden, who married a former slave-owning Southener in 1875. The show is set in a 1950's nursing home and the audience is treated as a visitor eager to hear her reminiscences, which spans some seventy years.

The play was adapted and produced by Martin Tahse and directed by Don Scardino. It will incorporate large projections on a makeshift screen illustrating the characters and times she relates from memory. For Ms. Burstyn it is an opportunity to play 25 characters and distill in ninety minutes that which took the author 718 pages to describe. (A television mini-series of the book was made in 1976 in which two actresses portrayed Ms. Marsden.)