STAGE REVIEW : A Comfortable Twain in Costa Mesa

One only can guess what Mark Twain would have made of the candidates up for election on Tuesday. But Hal Holbrook’s dead-on evocation of Twain at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Friday left little doubt that Twain distrusted politicians of any stripe, particularly those eager to serve in the nation’s capital.

“Sometimes it does seem to me that Washington is a stud farm for every jackass in the country,” Twain told the appreciative crowd that nearly filled the 3,000-seat hall for Holbrook’s famous one-man show “Mark Twain Tonight!”

The legendary 19th-Century author, humorist and social commentator could be casually dismissive: “I never vote for politicians. It only encourages them.” Or he could mount a frontal assault: “All Democrats are insane. Republicans are never insane. They’re just resting their intellect.”

Either way, Twain took the uncompromising view that all elected officials are unredeemable, which doesn’t seem that far from recent public opinion polls.

Wreathed in cigar smoke, wearing a white linen suit, and shuffling stoop-shouldered between a wooden lectern and a velvet-lined chair, Holbrook portrayed Twain at age 70 with ironic wit, richly layered acting, clever stage business and dry punch lines that kept detonating like a string of firecrackers.

Most of the evening’s material did not deal with politics, but when it did it drew the largest response. The remark about crazy Democrats in the show’s second half met with a roar of approval--the single biggest reaction in an evening filled with laughter. The remark about Republicans devoid of ideas met with surprised howls and an undertone of hisses.

In a high, raspy voice combining Southern twang and Midwestern drawl, Holbrook heaped scorn on Congress for being stupid as well as dishonest, derided Teddy Roosevelt for being an environmental hypocrite and satirized a President named George--Washington, not Bush, but the crowd got the point--for making the unctuous claim that he could not tell a lie. (“George was playing to the gallery.”)

Holbrook is so comfortable doing Twain (he’s been at it for nearly four decades now), and is so good at it, that he also does Twain doing others.

The second act, for example, was anchored by excerpts from “Huckleberry Finn” narrated by Twain as Huck himself in all his bashful glory. The passages included the opening of the novel as well as two key scenes with Pappy and Jim. The material deepened well beyond mere laughter, as did the performance, and turned out to be the evening’s high point.

The first act was anchored by a long, absurdist melange of tales told by Twain as a narrator with a weak memory. We met a variety of characters including old doddering Uncle Lem, who has trouble with a ram, and an old lady named Whittaker who has trouble with a glass eye.

Unfortunately, as enjoyable as it was to watch Holbrook impersonate Twain impersonating someone who keeps nodding off while searching his memory, these rambling tales meandered on too long and weakened the first half of the show.

But gems abounded nonetheless, among them Twain’s account of his adventures in the Pacific. He recalled that he once interviewed the King of the Sandwich Islands who told him why his subjects had no trouble understanding Christianity. “We’ve eaten the missionaries,” the King said. “They were hard as nails to digest.”

Twain became famous as a journalist and humorous lecturer long before he did as a novelist. Judging by Holbrook’s personification of him, nobody flayed the pretense of his era with such flair as well.

‘Mark Twain Tonight!’

A Mike Pettite presentation, starring Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain. At the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 650 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.