Durn and double durn. It's hard not to admire the folksy eagerness with which "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," a new musical adaptation of the Mark Twain classic, wants to please.
But an ingratiating attitude will only get you so far at Broadway's Minskoff Theatre, where Tom, Huck Finn, Becky Thatcher, Aunt Polly, Injun Joe, the Widow Douglas and all the other memorable Twain characters have been flattened to cardboard until all that remains is a cheerful, bland, greeting-card entertainment.
"Tom Sawyer" could use some sass and spirit, two things Ken Ludwig's bare-bones adaptation and Don Schlitz's mock-country score don't provide. The production, directed by Scott Ellis, lacks focus and drive, ambling along from incident to incident without galvanizing into a compelling musical.
Part of the problem is the original source material, an enduring piece of 19th-century Americana. "Tom Sawyer," set in Missouri in the 1840s, is a more episodic book than Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," which was the basis for the 1985 musical hit "Big River," a far sturdier show.
Still, "Tom Sawyer"--the novel--is a lot more fun than what these stage collaborators have concocted. Ludwig hits all the highlights: Tom whitewashing the fence, Tom and Huck hiding in the graveyard from Injun Joe, Tom protecting Becky from the local schoolmaster's wrath, the Widow Douglas teaching Huck how to read, Tom and Becky lost in the cave--and more.
Yet the incidents are told perfunctorily, and the lead performers don't have distinctive stage presences to lift them out of the ordinary. Tom (Joshua Park) is the one with the mop of curly hair; Huck (Jim Poulos) wears britches with one pants leg artfully rolled up to his knee--sort of a Mississippi River homeboy.
Both performers have strong, secure voices, but the songs, orchestrated with a loving country twang by Michael Starobin, evaporate quickly. One exception is "This Time Tomorrow," Aunt Polly's motherly declaration of love for her trouble-making nephew.
And Linda Purl's Aunt Polly is a younger, prettier version of a woman usually portrayed as cantankerous. Purl invests the role with considerable warmth. Who knew the actress, usually only seen in dramas, could sing? Aunt Polly has been given a love interest, too: Judge Thatcher, Becky's father. John Dossett manfully does his best in a thankless part.
Several actors in supporting roles stir up a few genuine laughs. Jane Connell, Broadway's Agnes Gooch in "Mame" some 35 years ago, scores as the exasperated Widow Douglas. So does John Christopher Jones as the pompous schoolmaster, inflicting a fractured French on his unwilling students. Marshall Pailet as Tom's little brother, Sid, is delightfully obnoxious, with the deepest voice this side of Tallulah Bankhead.
David Marques' choreography never quite takes off, working best in the fence-painting scene rather than in a more traditional dance sequence that has the entire population of St. Petersburg, Mo., up on its toes for an old-fashioned square dance.
Designer Heidi Ettinger created a majestic, moon-drenched Mississippi River setting for "Big River" 16 years ago. Her work here is more Early American cartoony. For much of the evening, the stage is dominated by what looks like a giant wooden ski slope that weirdly recalls Oz's Yellow Brick Road.
Ettinger's underground setting for McDougal's Cave, where Tom, Huck and Becky are pursued by Injun Joe, is dark, forbidding and a marvel of stage wizardry. You can almost smell the dankness. Anthony Powell's period costumes are opulent.
In the end, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" puts on stage the story but not the spirit of Twain's novel --and without that edgy humor, this musical version never really comes to life.
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