Adam Shonkwiler lists five dialects among his skills on his Internet resume. None of them came close to the one he used last night as Huckleberry Finn in "Big River," the Roger Miller musical that opened the 2010 season for Stages St. Louis at the Robert Reim Theatre in the Kirkwood Civic Center.
What did he use? Don't rightly know, but it didn't sound like anyone I've ever heard in Hannibal (Mark Twain called it St. Petersburg), St. Louis or Bricktown, Ark.
In any event, Shonkwiler created a mostly believable river rat, and Miller's blue-grassy, country, rootsy score was enjoyable to hear after many years. Miller had a blockbuster hit in "King of the Road," but his work on "Big River," earned him a Tony, the only one yet for a composer with a country twang to his music. The Broadway production ran for more than 1000 performances, earned seven Tonys and was the first Broadway hit for two St. Louisans, producer Rocco Landesman, the current chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and actor John Goodman, who originated the role of Pap. Landesman, a long-time Miller fan, persuaded the composer to get involved, and also convinced William Hauptman to work on the Mark Twain classic for the book.
The local production also earns high marks for director Michael Hamilton, scenic designer James Wolk and lighting designer Matthew McCarthy. Using an upper level against a backstage wall, some scrims and imaginative lighting brought Twain (Larry Mabry) into the action, stepping out of a picture frame and into the magic world. The passage also became a place for other action and singing to take place.
Among the cast, James Robinson stood out as Jim, the dignified, powerful fugitive slave whose relationship with Huck provides the core of the story. They did extremely well in "River in the Rain," "Worlds Apart" and "Muddy Water," and Robinson, later joined by the company, was special in "Free at Last." Lisa M. Ramey brought great feeling to "How Blest We Are," and she added great tone and depth to her work as a backup singer.
David Schmittou, a Stages regular the last few years, and newcomer Darrel Blackburn teamed in wonderfully as the Duke and the King, respectively, providing villainy as broad as the river itself and bringing laughs in between the expected hisses; they closed the first act stylishly in "When the Sun Goes Down in the South," with Shonkwiler joining in. Schmittou opened the second act brilliantly with "The Royal Nonesuch." Shonkwiler also delivered nicely in "I, Huckleberry, Me."
Richard Pruitt, in another Stages debut, was an effective Pap and delivered handsomely in "Gov'ment," a 1985 demand that the "dad-gum gummint" keep its dad-gum hands out of his pockets, though it was difficult to see what his sources of income might be.
Jim Bowen was charming as Tom Sawyer, delivering marvelously complex and involved solutions to any and all problems. He could figure out a way to use an entire Army battalion to mail a letter, each soldier having a different, convoluted task along the way. His song, "Hand for the Hog," was another winner.
St. Louis-based actors and Stages rergulars like John Flack, Zoe Vonder Haar, Alexis L. Kinney and Ben Nordstrom were fine, with Nordstrom a bright moment in "Arkansas," that's the song and not the state.
"Big River," a production of Stages St. Louis, through June 27 at the Robert Reim Theatre.
–Joe