I am home from th matinee, the talkback, and a brief visit with Rob Berman and parents. I thought the show was beautifully staged, but I cannot say that I like the piece, which falls into the trap of making perhaps too much of the King and the Duke. I admired it, and I liked much of the music. the band was wonderful. Tomorrow, I'll listen to the OBC recording.
The album is better than the show. You're right about the King and the Duke stealing the show. (I wasn't too thrilled with them in the novel because I thought they took up too much time.) Still, I enjoyed the musical the first time around with the full staging.
Maybe that's the trouble with journey musicals (Candide being another example). The episodes or adventures can vary widely.
The cast was great. The young actor playing Huck is really excellent, and I loved his duets with Jim. The King and the Duje were in excellent hands and very funny. The problem is that it's like
Candide in that essentially the same scene is repeated over and over: Huck and Jim encounter vanity, venality, humanity at its worst before they hop back on the raft. Even the epic and wonderful PBS miniseries, which had Richard Kiley, Lillian Gish, Barnard Hughes, and Jim Dale in the cast, felt the same.
I still prefer Lillian Hellman's libretto for
Candide over any others. she at least tried to solve the problem with a through-line and character development that Voltaire never considered.
