My Huckleberry Friend

Andrew Kruep as Huckleberry Finn and Gilbert Domally as Jim. News-Progress photos by Keith Stewart.

Well, you dad gum guv'ment

You sorry so and so's

You got your damn hands in every pocket

Of my clothes

Well you dad gum, dad gum, dad gum, guv'ment

Oh, don’t I, you know

Oh, don’t you love 'em sometimes

— “Guv’ment” from “Big River”

By Dan Hagen

“Big River” is a show with big heart that delivers big entertainment.

What could be more natural — and trickier — than marrying the American popular art form of the musical with what a considerable number of people have called the greatest American novel, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?”

Mark Twain’s 1884 novel became a successful Broadway musical precisely 100 years later, running for more than a thousand performances. The Little Theatre’s production, directed and choreographed by Kelly Shook, succeeds on the strength of its exemplary cast.

But the mood is set before the cast arrives by Alex M. Gaines’ set, a multi-level, riparian thing that gives the effect of rough-hewn, weathered wood, with a tattered back curtain that opens to reveal a river scene. Part of the set detaches to become a raft that moves smoothly from picaresque adventure to moral crisis.

The show isn’t overburdened with songs the way some are, and packs a considerable dramatic punch thanks to Twain’s genius. The Roger Miller songs — stylized bluegrass, country and gospel tunes — are all effective, some soaringly so.

Highlights include:

• Huck Finn (Equity actor Andrew Kruep), Tom Sawyer (Mike Danovich) and others singing “The Boys,” a high-spirited evocation of the good-natured bloodthirstiness of young men. “If the bunch of us all stick together, and we all go down as one,” they sing. “We could be highway robbers. We could be killers just out to have fun.”

• Michael Weaver as Huck’s sociopathic, alcoholic father Pap. Weaver exploits the best role he’s had at the Little Theatre in a while, sliding slyly from poignance to menace, and ranting musically about the guv’ment’s designs on the money he hasn’t got. I’m surprised the song isn’t a Tea Party anthem.

• Equity Actor Martin C. Hurt as the Duke and John McAvaney as the King, two who chew their scenery with relish. The conmen shine in “When the Sun Goes Down in the South,” drawing Huck into their dance, and again in “The Royal Nonesuch,” drawing the rubes into a faked transgender freak show.

It’s fun, although a little disheartening in a way, to see how much of Twain’s social satire still hits home on American culture — the self-righteous evildoers, the gullible lowbrows who’ll swallow any nonsense that’s dished up for them, the American eagerness to grovel for “royalty,” whatever that is. They’re all still too much with us.

• The powerful voices of Chrissy Harmon as Alice’s Daughter and Gilbert Domally as the runaway slave Jim. Harmon’s gospel star turn is in “How Blest We Are,” and Domally has four or five strong numbers. Perhaps my favorite is “Worlds Apart,” the song in which he and Huck confront the deep wonder of their friendship. Domally and Kruep elevate the moment to a genuine frisson for the audience.

Kruep as Huck and as Mike Danovich as Tom Sawyer

• Best of all, Andrew Kruep as Huckleberry. It can’t be easy for an adult to play a young teenager, but you wouldn’t know it from watching Kruep, whose boyish charisma and mischievous energy radiate from the stage.

Kruep is a sly wink, a happy step, a sudden smile, and he’s Twain’s great moral hero, made all the greater because he doesn’t know it. Huck has been told by the churchgoing slave owners that abolitionists are Satan’s henchmen and slavery is good, and he believes it. So when he decides that what the hell, he’ll help his friend Jim escape anyway, he thinks he’s condemning himself to hell. Consider the moral power of the fate Huck is willing to accept with a shrug.

Why? Huck explains, as best he can, in a song that reminds us of another brave American sailor. “Oh, I, Huckleberry, me,” he sings. “Hereby declare myself to be. Nothin' ever other than … Exactly what I am.”

And that’s more than enough for an evening of great enjoyment.

Incidental intelligence: “Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” a musical with a book by William Hauptman and music and lyrics by Roger Miller, runs through June 29 at the Little Theatre.

The show has lighting design by Greg Solomon, costume design by Malia Andrus, sound design by Patrick Burks, stage management by Jeremy J. Phillips and musical direction by Kevin Long. The cast includes Josh Houghton (as Mark Twain), Connie Mulligan, Emily Rhein, John Cardenas, Brady Miller, Andy Hudson, Andy Frank, Sidney Davis, Niko Pagsisihan, Haley Jane Schafer, Hanah Rose Nardone, Emily Bacino Althaus, Megan E. Farley and Gabriel Alonzo Smith.

For tickets, call The Little Theatre On The Square Box Office at 217-728-7375.