Playwright: music & lyrics by Roger Miller, book by William Hauptman, based on the novel by Mark Twain. At: Bohemian Theatre Ensemble at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont. Phone: 773-975-8150; $18-$25. Runs through: Oct. 10
Mark Twain's American epic encompasses enough Rousseauan fantasy and sly satire to have kept scholars and adapters busy for well over a century. The latter have mostly skirted the author's candid exposé of Southern small-town hypocrisy and intolerance to revel instead in the boyish adventures associated with the pantheistic dream of fleeing adult responsibilities and making a fresh start in pastoral surroundings.
The focus of this 1984 collaboration between playwright William Hauptman and singer-songwriter Roger Miller, however, is the moral evolution of its adolescent protagonist, whose acceptance of his corrupt society gradually gives way to espousal of humane values, even as he continues to apologize for his "contrary" ways. ( Taught that slavery is the will of God, our hero struggles with the prospect of divine punishment before defiantly resolving to help his friend, Jim, escape to freedom. )
But this doesn't mean that Twain's humorous observations have been excised in service of academic analysis ( and that includes Leslie Fiedler's notorious homoerotic tract on bucolic man-boy relationships ) . What distinguished the late Roger Miller from his peers was his irrepressibly playful aestheticthis is the man who wrote "You Can't Roller-Skate in a Buffalo Herd," after all. For every rousing hand-clapper like "Muddy Water" or contemplative ballad like "Leavin's Not the Only Way to Go," we also get such delightful ditties as a homage to our porcine pals ( "Hand for the Hog" ) and a patriotic anthem seemingly written for the sheer fun of finding rhymes for "Arkansas."
Andrew Mueller and Brian-Alwyn Newland's Huck and Jim lead a vocally agile ensemble featuring Courtney Crouse as the fanciful Tom Sawyer, John B. Leen ( in a departure from his usual somber roles ) as the bogus Duke and a jim-dandy string band augmented by several double-threat actors. But BoHo's inaugural production in the newly rehabbed Theatre Wit's auditorium is not without its flaws: while the proximity of spectators ranged no deeper than three rows from the curtain line makes for a cozy intimacy, its wide-thrust configuration tends to fragment the action, making individual comprehension of the story largely reliant on seat location. The soundproofing, however, is everything that the owners promised, with not a whisper of ambient noise interrupting the pleasures of this genial opening to another season on Chicago's burgeoning off-Loop circuit.