Mark Twain Tonight!

"Chaucer is dead. Spenser is dead. Milton is dead. Shakespeare is dead. And I'm not feeling so good myself." So begins Hal Holbrook's legendary one-man show, in which he brings to life Mark Twain in a reproduction of the famed writer's lectures. The setting is 1905, when Twain was 70, five years before he died, and age is on his mind. "I'm on the verge of being an old man," he says.

Holbrook has done this show for over 50 years. He is now 82, a dozen years older than Twain actually was at the time. He has played this show thousands of times, in many places, and the other night he stopped at Princeton's McCarter Theater for an appreciate full house.

More a concert than a play, the program lists several possible stories that Twain may spin, but they are changed every night. It's almost like the Rolling Stones changing their set list. Holbrook chooses what might be most relevant to an audience of folks a hundred years later than the actual time, and partly due to Twain's prescience, a lot of it is relevant.

The show I saw was particularly hard on Congress. "The only native criminal class in America is congress," Twain says. "Let's pretend you were an idiot. Or let's pretend you were a member of congress. Oh, I've repeated myself." I imagine Twain would not be pleased, but also not surprised, that 100 years later things are pretty much the same.

Old age is also a recurring theme. Twain describes a trip he took to the baths at Marienbad, where he drank "cemetery water." He also takes some shots at doctors, and in a Princeton audience, there were probably many physicians in attendance. "To be a sucessful doctor you need a combination of ignorance and confidence," Twain says, to a roar of laughter.

Holbrook also does some readings from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, taking the parts of Huck and Jim, including a quite moving passage as the latter when he discovers his daughter has gone deaf from scarlet fever. There is also some amusing business when Twain tries to light a cigar. A few of the transitions seemed a little ragged, making one wonder whether Holbrook is deciding what stories to tell on the spot. Nevertheless, it's a marvelous evening of entertainment, and a reminder of the genius of Mark Twain.