Watching sign language never sounded better than it does in the national touring production of “Big River.” Incongruous as that may seem, read on.
The question going into DeafWest’s lauded musical adaptation of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was never one of its nobility. It was whether fully integrating sign language into the staging, while having deaf and hearing actors twin up to play single roles simultaneously, would help or hinder the storytelling.
Turns out the sign language accentuates and, yes, even amplifies the storytelling. By turning sign language into exaggerated, precision choreography, not to mention a dozen other staging novelties, director Jeff Calhoun has taken a three-dimensional theatrical experience and made it into four. What results is an evening unlike anything you have seen – or heard – before. This is not a novelty. It is a rarity.
Calhoun’s staging literally brings Twain’s book to life. Enlarged pages of an old-fashioned “Huck Finn” novel open like doors into the story. And on an evening when your perspective will be constantly challenged, the mighty Mississippi flows not literally across the floor but as a vertical blue scrim rising into the rafters.
There is no set formula to the casting of deaf and hearing actors. Daniel Jenkins plays Twain, the narrator, while giving voice to 12-year-old Huck, wonderfully realized by deaf actor Tyrone Giordano. But this is not a “deaf Huck.” Twain simply hangs off to the side, speaking Huck’s lines, singing his songs and even playing guitar and banjo, while Giordano otherwise fully performs the role.
Other deaf or hard-of-hearing actors perform while a company mate provides the vocal language from a visible balcony. Other twinned roles include Troy Kutsur and Erick Devine as Huck’s drunken Pap. But this time, the two are mirrored in costume and mannerisms like a vaudeville joke. The approach visually magnifies the drunken menace of this violent man, but having him played for comic effect is a contradiction.
As the slave Jim, the magnificent David Aron Damane is one of several hearing actors who perform solo. And everyone, deaf or hearing, provides sign language when speaking.
“Do You Wanna Go to Heaven?” is our first clue to how sign language will be used as a powerful visual tool. The chorus moves as they might in a typical dance number but their arms are synchronized in a stylized, sign-language rhythm.
Still, one wonders if anyone seated more than 20 rows from the stage is having the same visceral experience as those who can see the sign language up close. On Broadway, “Big River” was performed in a 740-seat house. The Buell seats 2,800. It’s just not the same show from the back rows.
The most heated debate exiting Tuesday’s opening was whether an adult should voice Huck. I thought the choice was artistically credible – Huck grew out of Twain’s imagination, after all. But many thought the adult voice robs Huck of his boyishness.
Few could have known this delicious additional subtext: Jenkins played Huck in the 1985 Broadway revival upon which this production is based (he was replaced by Denver’s Martin Moran). Considering all the twinning going on, I thought it wonderful to see Jenkins and Twain, within one body, offering a window into the man Huck will one day become.
Until DeafWest came along, “Big River” was best known for the brilliant country/spiritual score by Roger Miller (“King of the Road”). Miller’s “Muddy Water” and “River in the Rain” practically gift-wrapped the 1985 Tony Award for Ron Richardson as Jim. They are again given full justice here by the great Damane. And spirituals such as “How Blest We Are” will help make stardom an inevitability for opening-night Alice understudy Kia Glover.
We are told at the beginning of Twain’s novel that anyone attempting to find a plot or a moral will be shot. There are both, of course, and they are wrapped in Huck’s arc from learned racism to a belief in equality. Calhoun wisely does not diminish the reality of Huck’s racism, for how else can his epiphany mean anything?
The moral is most evident in the reprise of “Waitin’ for the Light to Shine.” It climaxes, as many musical tunes do, with the band stopping while a chorus brings the last line home a cappella. Calhoun takes it one step further by having the last line mouthed only to sign language, and in the momentary silence you can hear the unspoken words rushing from your ears to your tingling spine.
And when Jim and our two Hucks perform “Worlds Apart,” a song about the chasm separating black and white, slavery and freedom, one can’t help but feel that on this night, the gap between the hearing and deaf worlds has also been brought a little closer together.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Big River”
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MUSICAL|National touring company presented by DeafWest Theatre|Written by William Hauptman (book), music and lyrics by Roger Miller|Directed by Jeff Calhoun|Starring Tyrone Giordano, Daniel Jenkins and David Aron Damane|Buell Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets|THROUGH MAY 22|8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 40 minutes|$20-$55|303-893-4100, all King Soopers stores, www.denvercenter.org
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-John Moore
