The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Recently someone in Missouri sent me a picture of the house I was born in. Heretofore I have always stated it was a palace, but I shall be more guarded now. – Mark Twain

Anne and I went to go see The Reps Christmas production, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. We went on the last night of the production. Tomorrow, now today, the theater goes dark until next year. It seems oxymoronic to try to write a review of a show that has already closed, but here goes anyway. “It was awesome”, said the ten-year-old exiting before us, “But scary too!” She ought to know, because Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” is all about tweens like her. In the story, Tom, Huck and Becky were all in the prime of their childhood, on the cusp of adolescence and then only adulthood ahead of them. Is it all that strange that a well written story about children from the past would appeal to them in the prescient?

Most Americans are familiar with Twain’s “Sawyer” and also his “Huckleberry Finn”. In Missouri, Samuel Clemens’s birth state, this is almost required reading. You can’t say much about culture in Missouri, except that it is home to the most beloved and also the greatest American novel. Twain’s first published story was, “Advice to Little Girls”. Anne quipped, “lookout for Maurice Chevalier”. I countered that Chevalier lived over a hundred years after Twain. She countered that he was just that present.

…the cave was but a labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and out again an led nowhere. It was said that one might wander days and nights together through its intricate tangle of rifts and chasms and never find the end of the cave. – Tom Sawyer

“Sawyer” made for great theater. While not a musical per say, there was plenty of choreography in the play and the background music helped to set the mood for each scene. We had a good time and enjoyed the play. There is a chance that one might still be able to see this play. Like last year’s hit, starring Kathleen Turner, “High”, this play started in Hartford, and played in Cincinnati, before coming to Saint Louis. “Heat” then opened on Broadway, so maybe “Sawyer” is headed there too?

We had dinner before the play at Cyano’s, home of extra whipped cream. (Sorry, Alice) I felt bad about leaving the boys home to fend for themselves, but they managed. They had dinner together with friends, Annie and Jessica. Like Dan, Annie is in art school, in LA. Jessica is a high school friend of Dave’s and now substitutes with Anne.  

Ten Thousand River Commissions…cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over and laugh at. – Life on the Mississippi