Millions of people watched Richard Thomas as John Boy Walton grew up on television each week as the oldest of seven children in “The Waltons”.
All grown up now, Thomas has turned his talents to that of portraying one of America’s greatest literary figures, Samuel Langhorne Clemens – better known as Mark Twain!
The Emmy Award winning actor took over the role of Twain from Hal Holbrook and is now travelling around the country in the one man show “Mark Twain Tonight”. Holbrook earned a Tony Award for portraying Twain and now following in his footsteps, Richard Thomas is the only actor authorized to play the role.
Thomas spoke on the role saying, “this was Hal’s life’s work, absolutely. He played Twain for more than 50 years. We had a wonderful collegial relationship, and we liked and admired each other very much, so I was thrilled when the estate reached out. It’s important to keep it going, not just for Hal, but for Mark Twain as well.”
Thomas added, “I saw Hal’s 1967 PBS performance of it when I was 16, and I never forgot it. It echoes in my psyche all the time, Hal on one shoulder, and Twain on the other…and yet, when it comes time to be an actor and get out on stage and give your performance and make it your own, I can’t really worry about all that. Becoming someone else like this, it’s… Well, it’s certainly a challenge.”
Speaking on Twain, Thomas said, “people know ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Tom Sawyer’, but not the full panoply of Twain’s genius as a satirist, humorous novelist, nonfiction writer, travel writer and performer. Twain is the great mirror up to our nature, warts and all, including himself. He doesn’t exempt himself from any reproach. Twain is always relevant for Americans, because he reflects all of our complexity, our contradictions, our grand aspirations, how far short we fall, how we try to make it right, how we grow and learn and evolve emotionally and socially.”
“Mark Twain Tonight!” is a reproduction of one of Twain’s speaking engagements where he spoke at length to the common man.
Thomas noted, “Hal didn’t write a play. He curated and edited and put together all this wonderful Twain material. What I have inherited is a marvelous deck of cards that I can learn and shuffle and weave together however I see fit. Hal had 50-plus years to learn everything Twain ever wrote, and get comfortable with it. I had a couple months. So I had to learn it like a show, at first, picking the material I would start with. But now that that is in my bones, I’m starting to learn other pieces, and as I get confident enough, I swap them in and out the way he did. It’s Twain’s words, but it’s also an open form, and it gives whoever is playing it a very free hand in terms of creating the piece as it goes along. You can mix and match it your own way, depending on the audience in front of you.” Thomas calls the audiences his “scene partners”.
“Mark Twain Tonight!” tour dates:
Dec 19 & 20 at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota, FL
Jan 6 at the Ryman Auditorium in Daytona Beach, FL
Jan 8 at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium in Chattanooga, TN
Jan 10 at the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville, TN
Jan 13 at the Stanley Theatre in Utica, NY
Jan 15 at the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans, LA
Jan 17 at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio, TX
Jan 20 at the Lutcher Theater in Orange, TX
Jan 21 at the Cowan Center in Tyler, TX
Jan 23 at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, AR
Jan 27 at Bass Hall in Fort Worth, TX
Jan 28 & 29 at the Rudder Auditorium in College Station, TX
Jan 31 at the Denver Center in Denver, CO
Feb 3 at the Vilar Performing Arts Center in Beaver Creek, CO
Feb 4 & 5 at the Asteria Theatre in Grand Junction, CO
Feb 12 at the Balboa Theatre in San Diego, CA
Feb 14 at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, CA
Feb 17 at the Grand Theater in Wausau, WI
Feb 19 at the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts in Greensboro, NC
Feb 22 at the Marathon Center in Findlay, OH
feature photo taken from MarkTwainplay.com