Winner of seven Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Music, and Best Book of a Musical.
Recommended for ages 8+
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REHEARSAL VIDEO
Click Here for a behind-the-scenes video of Big River in rehearsal >
Duke (Mike Price) & Huck (Seth Bazacus) dance The Royal Nonesuch
American Sign Language interpretation will be available at the 2:00pm performance on Sunday, May 13th. Please contact Cardinal Stage Company at 812-336-7110 for information regarding seats for this event.
American Sign Language Interpretation is made possible with support from the Bloomington Community Arts Commission.
THE H-T LIKES BIG RIVER!
Big River’ a must-see musical set on Mighty Mississippi
By Joel Pierson - H-T Columnist
Seth Bazacus, playing Huck Finn, rehearses with Liza Wallace, playing Mary Jane Wilkes, late last week for the Cardinal musical, “Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” David Snodgress | Herald-Times
Some shows inspire audiences, filling them with energy and enthusiasm. For me, that’s “Big River,” which opens this week at the Buskirk-Chumley, courtesy of Cardinal Stage Company.
The music is so memorable and so sophisticated, it stays with you, serving as the perfect vehicle to deliver the meaningful and enjoyable storyline.
“Big River” is taken from “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain (who usually doesn’t do much for me), with music by Roger “King of the Road” Miller (who usually doesn’t do much for me). But somehow, together, they equal more than the sum of their parts.
For those who lack the proper Twaining, it’s the story of Missouri teen Huck Finn, who runs away from his alcoholic father and preachy community, while assisting runaway slave Jim to escape from his pursuers.
I called the music sophisticated, and it is, but it’s also very approachable. With a combination of folk, country, gospel and bluegrass, it effuses Americana, which is appropriate for a Mark Twain story. And while the music is indicative of middle America, 19th century, it doesn’t feel “old” or unreachable.
Arisha Anderson, Kiotta Marshal, Louis Robinson, Rico Hamilton, Maria Biggs and Alex Gulck in The Crossing
What it feels is powerful. The show has a strong sense of humanity, and the music conveys it, as do the characters and situations.
Musical director Dan Lodge-Rigal is toning down any “Broadway” feel, in favor of the more authentic, genuine roots sound Roger Miller instilled in his music. “In essence, we wanted to find the authentic heart of the music and be as true as possible to the time period and culture in which the original story was set,” Lodge-Rigal said.
It’s hard to do the show justice in words, because the sound is so crucial to its magic. Songs including “Worlds Apart,” “Waitin’ for the Light to Shine,” “Muddy Water,” “How Blest We Are” and “You Oughta Be Here with Me” are remarkable for their emotional power. And then Miller can turn on a dime and evoke laughs with songs like “The Royal Nonesuch,” “Arkansas,” “Guv’ment” and “Hand for the Hog.”
No surprise, director Randy White is as excited about this show as I am.
He says, “‘Big River’ is a gem of a musical, and one that has rarely been performed in this area. We’re calling it ‘country gospel,’ and it’s a celebration of a uniquely American sound.”
The cast will include many local favorites, including Mike Price and Gerry Pauwels, as well as visiting artists Seth Bazacas, Javier Picayo and Franklin Grace.
White, as always, mixes locals with national talent to maximum effect for his audience. It’s the last hurrah of the season for Cardinal, and they want to go out with flair.
Regular readers of this column know how I roll. I present the facts and let you decide if the show sounds right for you. Seldom do I use words like “must-see,” but I’m going to go out on a limb and use it today.
“Big River” is such a theatrical delight, and Cardinal has such a solid track record with musicals. This show comes around very infrequently, so I’m calling this an opportunity that’s too good to pass up for audiences of almost all ages.
Everyone age 8 and up will likely find something to love in this gem. Don’t miss the boat.
The company dances The Royal Nonesuch
ON HUCKLEBERRY FINN
by Joshua WolfIt would be an understatement to say that since it’s publication in 1885, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has provoked extreme reactions. Almost immediately, the book was criticized for celebrating crudeness. It’s central character smoked, defied authority at every turn, lied like Odysseus, hung around naked on a raft with a grown man, and expressed a frank willingness to go to hell. A number of public libraries swiftly banned it from their stacks (an act of censorship that generated as much welcome publicity for the author as such acts tend to do today).
The trend has continued, although the objection has shifted from coarseness to racism. According to the American Library Association, Huckleberry Finn was the fifth most-frequently-challenged book in the United States in the 1990s. In the 21st Century, it has been challenged in numerous schools throughout the country, and in 2011, NewSouth Books released a Bowdlerized edition of the novel that replaced the word “nigger” with “slave” and removed the term “injun.”
Many of our most celebrated authors have lauded it, while others have found it morally troubling. Hemingway famously wrote that “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” and critics continue to regard it as one of the most influential American novels yet written. On the other hand, authors such as Jane Smiley have had no difficulty demonstrating that Jim is an overtly racist caricature.
Jim (Franklin Grace) and Huck (Seth Bazacus) sing Muddy Water
How many 19th century novels still provoke such wildly disparate responses? In many ways, the story remains relevant today in part because our disparate responses reveal how different our perspectives still are. Twain’s American landscape is simultaneously magical, nightmarish, nostalgic and hilarious. Unlike Herman Melville or Henry James, he is immediately accessible. He compels us to keep reading. But at the same time, the voices and attitudes evinced so compellingly are a painfully visceral reminder not only of our bloody history of racism, but of the difficulties we still face when we try to talk about race in America today.
Like many great literary characters, Huck is hard to pin down. Yes, he’s willing to go to hell to rescue Jim, and we applaud that. But his rescue attempts are buffoonish. This is no laughing matter. Or is it? Both Huck and Jim slide almost effortlessly from fully realized humans to caricatures and back again. Is this a comic romp or serious art? Is it for children or adults?
The questions keep piling up, as if Twain is teasing us from beyond the grave, laughing at an America that is still as race-obsessed and easy to satirize as it was 120 years ago. And although it sometimes makes us queasy and uncomfortable, we ignore the difficulties of this story, as Americans and as readers, at our peril. Our disparate responses give us the opportunity to speak openly about issues that make us uncomfortable, issues of both personal and community identity.
Toni Morrison, who describes her reaction to reading the novel in junior high as “shaming” reflected later in life that “the brilliance of Huckleberry Finn is that it is the argument it raises….For a hundred years, the argument that this novel is has been identified, reidentified, examined, waged, and advanced. What it cannot be is dismissed. It is classic literature, which it to say that it heaves, manifests, and lasts.”
