Mr. Clemens And Mr. Brown
by Sally Netzel

About half the lies in this play originated with Mark Twain, all the rest come from Sally Netzel, with great affection.

Truth plays a minor part, Samuel Clemens and his family live in Hartford, Conn., in 1885; Harriet Beecher Stowe in her dotage was a neighbor of theirs; Louisa May Alcott saw to it that Huckleberry Finn was banned in Concord because it was "trash"; and Mark Twain was hurt by her review of his masterpiece.

And it is true that from that date, Twain's writing changed from the rich sprawl of anecdote to sparse moral and logical clarity, and wry satire began to darken into cynicism.

Mr. Clemens and Mr. Brown is a comedy of that time of change, of the happy conflict between a man and his youth, honesty and pretension, tradition and the wildly approaching turn of the century.

Area staging.