STAGE REVIEW : BECALMED WATERS SLOW ‘BIG RIVER’ AT SEGERSTROM HALL

“Big River” is a biiiiig show. It sprawls. It meanders. It winds. Just like the Mississippi. You’d think that would be just exactly right for a show based on Mark Twain’s witty and wise “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” It’s not. Its emphasis, or that of this production, is misplaced.

The national company of “Big River” sailed into Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Hall Tuesday like Jim and Huck’s raft: with smooth, unruffled, unsinkable predictability. It didn’t exactly beach itself there, but neither did it soar. It was to Twain what Velveeta is to cheese.

Instead of size, the emphasis should have been on the wit and the wisdom. A smaller show, more flexibly focused on the muscular derring-do of the boy Huck, on the rascality of his variegated companions, would work a lot better than this Disney-esque version of it.

This reviewer never saw the 1985 “Big River” that Des McAnuff staged in La Jolla (the credited director here is Michael Greif, who served as McAnuff’s assistant then), but one suspects that what it lacked in refinement in those early days it made up for in raffishness. Just knowing that Tuck Milligan and Ben Halley Jr. played Huck and Jim, respectively, gives one an immediate sense of the spirit and earthiness the show must have had.

While Michael Edward-Stevens as Jim gives by far the most stirring performance in this highly processed version of “Big River” (and has the best voice), it could stand to be a lot better supported and stronger. Romain Fruge’s Huck is pleasant but oh-so-bland.

And yet. . . . The problem is not so much with the cast (26 actors play 65 roles) or the design, but in an absence of spontaneity. Among the better things about “Big River” are Heidi Landesman’s set, with its shimmering tributary snaking into the horizon (nicely lit by Richard Riddell) and its raft and other flotsam virtually floating on stage.

So is it a matter of fatigue? Too much polishing and repolishing where a little coarseness would have been better? Hard to tell.

(“Quilters,” another musical in the same vein--that one about pioneering women--suffered from similar beautification when it came to the Mark Taper; the rougher, darker texture adopted instead by the Denver Center Theatre Company’s touring company served the material much better.)

There is, after all, not much wrong with Hauptman’s book for “Big River.” It tries to focus on the Twain and spends a long time emphasizing the hell-raising of those two ruffians, the King (Walker Joyce) and the Duke (Michael Calkins), both rowdy enough if here too cartoonish.

The amiable Roger Miller score has its moments. Songs such as “Do Ya Wanna Go to Heaven!,” “The Boys,” “Guv’ment,” and “I, Huckleberry, Me” adorn the first act and aim to forcibly rouse it from its torpor. But his “River in the Rain” has real beauty. It’s a tender and lovely ballad by any standards.

The only truly moving moment of the evening comes in the second act, when Jim talks about his daughter, the door and the wind that slammed the door. It closely follows another of Miller’s better songs: “Worlds Apart.” Jim and Alice’s daughter (Angela Hall) share Miller’s best stuff, including Jim’s “Free at Last” (a stolen phrase, but. . . .) and Alice’s daughter’s (why couldn’t she be given a name?) quasi-operatic “How Blest We Are.”

Costumes (Patricia McGourty) are too romanticized to touch home, sound (Otts Munderloh) is entirely overmiked, choreography (Janet Watson) is minimal--all in keeping with this stately, flaccid, overdone edition.

Where Twain scored big by giving us flesh-and-blood people, this production gives us valentines: Heart-shaped paper cut-outs of the real thing. What this musical needs most is a little true grit.

Performances at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Dr. , Costa Mesa , run daily through Sept. 19 at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturday, Sunday, next Thursday and Sept. 19 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $19-$28; (714) 556-ARTS.