A raucous, well-acted 'Tom Sawyer' at People's Light & Theatre
Strange that at People's Light & Theatre, Tom Sawyer follows Huck Finn, whose own novelized tale was written as a sequel to Sawyer's. The company produced the excellent Splittin' the Raft, an adaptation of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, during its 2006-2007 season, and is just now getting around to Laura Eason's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Strange that at People's Light & Theatre, Tom Sawyer follows Huck Finn, whose own novelized tale was written as a sequel to Sawyer's. The company produced the excellent
Splittin' the Raft
, an adaptation of
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
, during its 2006-2007 season, and is just now getting around to Laura Eason's
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
.
It was worth the wait.
Though its eight-person cast ranges in age and experience from recent University of the Arts grads Jamison Foreman and Brian Cowden to longtime People's Light vets Alda Cortese and Tom Teti, there is no shortage of scampering around James F. Pyne Jr.'s set, dominated by a rickety wooden platform that serves as fishing jetty, cave, and just about every other purpose befitting a group of boys and men bent on mischief. (Some of that manly mischief is a bit frightening, and therefore best suited for ages 10 and older.)
And while its principals - Cowden as Huck and Jefferson Haynes as Tom - lend their roles a childish gravity, its supporting actors give the production raucous life. Rachel Joffred's Becky Thatcher, with her round cheeks and the tight, solemn lips of a Sendak-drawn imp; Chris Bresky's amiable, jumpy Joe Harper; Joe Guzman's glowering Injun Joe, switch-wielding School Master, and droning Minister - all animate Twain's boy's-eye-view of a small-town population. Several of the actors also get to play a range of ages, with Teti running around gleefully in a boy's short pants and Bresky donning a judge's muttonchop sideburns.
There's authenticity in Eason's script and David Bradley's direction (punctuated by Christopher Colucci's down-home sound design, complete with fiddling and banjo picking). The swiftness of a childhood summer's passing - of childhood itself - is bookended by the play's opening and closing scenes, which recall Our Town-style entreaties.
"Part of our plan," says silver-haired Teti, as he and his cast mates face the audience, "is to remind you of what you once were yourself."
That depth of feeling suffuses Huck's satisfied smile as he stands smoking a corncob pipe, flanked by his friends. It's also in the way Becky and Tom show glimmers of the man and woman they will become, she holding his hand, asking him to stay with her if they don't make it out of the cave, he responding - despite his own fears - with confidence.
Dennis Parichy's lighting also plays a crucial role in both scenes, warming Cowden's lonely Huck in an orange glow and, conversely, emphasizing Joffred and Haynes' solitude with shadowy grays that turn the platform as cold and menacing as a rock-walled cavern.
Twain's and Tom's bucolic lives were marked by the frequent deaths of children or their parents, by slavery, and by American Indians recently uprooted from their homes. Twain, Eason, and this production acknowledge that it's a tough, scary world, but that navigating it is a skill taught best by the young.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Through Sunday, March 13,
at People's Light & Theatre Co., 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern. Tickets: $20 to $31.
Information: 610-644-3500 or www.peopleslight.org.
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