Twain Tamed

Someday, a hungry playwright is going to write a valid adaptation of Mark Twain’s adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. To date, they have completely ignored the fact that Twain did not intend them as kids’ stories, and even if he had, at the time he wrote them children were given a little more meat before their treacle.

The musical adaptation currently at the La Habra Depot Theatre is by Dave Barton and Matt Band, and the story of “Tom Sawyer” is once again treated as whipped cream without any strawberry shortcake underneath.

It’s so simplistic, even some of the kids in the audience were bored. Just after intermission, a mother soothed her moppet by saying: “Now, there are only four scenes in the second act, and not as many songs as in the first act.”

Besides having a cast of dozens of tiny and not-so-tiny performers, this production is a case of goo overkill. The script mostly ignores the really human values that Twain addressed. The Widder Douglas (a personable Marie V. Koller), who briefly adopts Huck Finn, is given scant notice, and Tom himself is a bad boy without much redeeming value, which makes it odd that Becky Thatcher is even vaguely attracted to him.

The problem is compounded by director Terri Miller Schmidt’s obvious desire to let the young actors--not to mention the adult actors--fly off in any direction. Besides her awfully slow tempos throughout, partly due to unnecessarily involved set changes, she allows them mostly the freedom to mug and pose to their heart’s content.

Child actors, even those in Southern California, still need to be told what to do. Ryan Domis is very miscast as Tom. He’s going to be a comic when he grows up, but maybe not a character actor. He mugs outrageously, like the movies’ Jack Oakie, and he postures as though he’s playing cowboys and Indians.

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Most of what is right in this youth production is evident in the performance of a few youngsters with innate savvy. The best example is Justin Garms’ Huckleberry Finn. Garms is so natural it’s a relief. Several other boys in the ensemble would have made dandy Toms.

The girls mostly have a head start on the boys. Nita Reynolds, as Tom’s cousin Mary, and Andrea Dodson, as Becky Thatcher, stand out. Both are charming, honest and properly feisty.

Of the adults in the production, Spider Madison is notable as the town drunk Muff Potter, and John Gillies, as Injun Joe, manages to appear likable even when he tries to toss Tom and Becky into the bottomless pit in the cave, inadvertently tumbling in himself.

BE THERE

“Tom Sawyer,” La Habra Depot Theatre, 311 S. Euclid. 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. $10. Ends Aug. 16. (562) 905-9625.