Review of Hal Holbrook: Mark Twain Tonight!

I was convinced that there was no actor on stage in this brilliant production which basically recalls the man who invented stand-up comedy when he wasn't writing classic novels. That was MARK TWAIN on stage with sage words such as "Truth is our most valuable commodity. So we economize it." I woulda bet money that it wasn't Hal Holbrook but the genuine article of the former Samuel Clemens, pacing and puffing on his cigar with smoke rings to enshroud wisdom with humor. God made man because he was disappointed with the monkey. My only objection to that line is that I personally did not create it! What Louis Armstrong is to every trumpeter so be Mark Twain to anyone who ever tried to be funny or literary. MTT was ninety minutes long and if it had been nine hundred minutes of Twain-alia, my interest would never have flagged. Has any other country ever produced a more valuable commodity than Mark Twain? The genius of Hal Holbrook was that what he said was so impacted with wit that you never thought of the voice as coming from an actor.