{"id":1974966,"date":"2025-08-22T18:50:33","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T18:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1974966"},"modified":"2025-08-22T18:50:33","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T18:50:33","slug":"time-for-twain-one-man-show-hits-the-road-entertainment-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/time-for-twain-one-man-show-hits-the-road-entertainment-world\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Time for Twain’: One-man show hits the road | Entertainment World"},"content":{"rendered":"

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NEW YORK \u2014 Richard Thomas<\/a> has not one but two big shoes to fill when he goes out on the road this summer in a celebrated one-man show.<\/p>\n

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The Emmy Award winner and Tony Award nominee is portraying the great American writer Mark Twain<\/a> in a play written and performed for decades by the late Hal Holbrook.<\/a><\/p>\n

Thomas immediately accepted the offer to star in the 90-minute \u201cMark Twain Tonight!\u201d<\/a> that will tour the country into 2026 \u2014 Feb. 4\u20135 the show will be at Asteria Theatre, 864 Bunting Ave. (cmustages.com\/tickets) \u2014 before wondering what he\u2019d gotten himself into.<\/p>\n

\u201cI walked down to the street and I said, \u2018Are you crazy? What are you out of your mind?\u2019\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cI had to grapple with who\u2019s the bigger fool \u2014 the man who says, \u2018Yes, I\u2019ll do it\u2019 or the man that says, \u2018No, I won\u2019t\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

Holbrook portrayed the popular novelist and humorist for more than a half century starting in 1954, making over 2,300 performances to a collective audience of more than 2 million. He and Thomas were fond of each other and would see each other\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

The show mixes Twain\u2019s speeches and passages from his books and letters to offer a multidimensional look at an American icon, who toured the U.S. with appearances.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to feel very much like I\u2019m not only following in Hal\u2019s footsteps, but in Twain\u2019s as well,\u201d says Thomas, who began his career as John-Boy Walton on TV\u2019s \u201cThe Waltons\u201d and became a Broadway mainstay.<\/p>\n

Thomas jokes that Holbrook had 50 years to settle into the role and he has only a year or so. \u201cI have the advantage on him that he started when he was 30 and he was pretending to be an old man. I\u2019m 74 so I\u2019m right there. That\u2019s the one area where I\u2019m up on him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time for Twain, you know? I mean, it\u2019s always time for Twain, always. He\u2019s always relevant because he\u2019s utterly and completely us, with warts and all,\u201d Thomas says.<\/p>\n

The actor will travel with a stage manager and a trunk with his costumes, but all the other elements will be sourced locally by the venues \u2014 such as desks and chairs, giving each show local touches.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something about doing a show for people in their own community, in their theater that they support, that they raise money for. They\u2019re not coming to you as tourists. You\u2019re coming to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/p>\n

Richard Thomas is shown at the 2017 Tony Awards Meet the Nominees press day in New York.<\/p>\n

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\n THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/span>
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Thomas has done a one-man show before \u2014 \u201cA Distant Country Called Youth\u201d using Tennessee Williams letters \u2014 but that allowed him to read from the script on stage. Here he has no such help.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the keys is to balance the light and the shadow, how funny, how outrageous, the polemic and the darkness and the light. You want that balanced beautifully,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Other actors \u2014 notably Val Kilmer<\/a> and Jerry Hardin \u2014 have devised one-man shows about the creator of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, who still manages to fascinate. A new biography of Twain by Ron Chernow<\/a> came out this year, which Thomas is churning through.<\/p>\n

Thomas sees Twain as representing America perfectly: \u201cHe just lets it all hang out there. He\u2019s mean-spirited; he\u2019s generous. He\u2019s bigoted; he is progressive. He hates money; he wants to be the richest man in America. All of these fabulous contradictions are on display.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas has lately become a road rat, touring in \u201cTwelve Angry Men\u201d from 2006-08, \u201cThe Humans\u201d in 2018 and starring as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin\u2019s adaptation of \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird\u201d<\/a> from 2022-24.<\/p>\n

Orin Wolf, CEO of tour producer NETworks Presentations,<\/a> got to watch Thomas on the road in \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird\u201d and says having him step into Twain will strengthen the theater community across the country<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so rare nowadays to have a true star of the road,\u201d Wolf says, calling Thomas \u201ca breed of actor and artist that they rarely make anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m delighted to be supporting him and delighted that he\u2019s chosen to do this because I think this is something he could also take on for hopefully many years,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

After Twain, Thomas will next be seen on Broadway this spring opposite Ren\u00e9e Elise Goldsberry and Marylouise Burke in David Lindsay-Abaire\u2019s new comedy, \u201cThe Balusters.\u201d<\/p>\n

But first there\u2019s the eloquence and wry humor in a show about Twain that reveals he was often a frustrated optimist when it came to America.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it reflects right now a lot of our frustration with how things are going,\u201d says Thomas. \u201cWill things ever be better and can things ever better? Or are we just doomed to just be this species that is going to constantly eat its own tail and are we ever going to move forward?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.gjsentinel.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Richard Thomas has not one but two big shoes to fill when he goes out on the road this summer in a celebrated one-man show. The Emmy Award winner and Tony Award nominee is portraying the great American writer Mark Twain in a play written and performed for decades by the late […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1974967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1974966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Time-for-Twain-One-man-show-hits-the-road-Entertainment.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1974966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1974967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1974966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1974966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1974966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}