MARK TWAIN’S ROUGHING IT

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.” Be it telling tall tales, fables, or anecdotes, American humorist Mark Twain was a master. But what formed his timeless fiction? Life experience or vivid imagination?

Even success hasn’t made Samuel Clemens (Oscar nominee, Emmy and Golden Globe-winner James Garner, Breathing Leasons) a happy man. Instead of devoting his talent to “serious matters” he’s wasted them on yarns — as Mark Twain, a mere humourist. Now, asked to speak to Bryn Mawr’s graduating class of 1891, he’s filled with dread. His daughter Susy is a student and he hopes to make her proud, and not lend credence to his reputation among the elite as a long-winded buffoon. His wife Livy (Golden Globe-winner Jill Eikenberry, L.A. Law) has enough faith in him for the both of them — as a loving husband, a devoted father, and an extraordinary writer.

He needn’t have worried. In front of an enraptured crowd, the masterful storyteller unfolds a masterful story indeed. It’s the tale of a polite greenhorn (Robin Dunne, The Circle, as a young Sam) from the East initiated into the rough-and-tumble society of the raw Western frontier. It’s the life-affirming journey of an awestruck tenderfoot enriched by the people he meets and the stories they have to tell. It’s the epic adventure of achieving a dream, and realising a purpose. Sifting through “passions, obsessions, pretensions, failures, and successes,” he relates the heart-warming, thrilling, and “somewhat truish” story of how a man named Samuel Clemens became known to the world as Mark Twain. Through his eyes, history truly comes to life as never before.

Based on Mark Twain’s autobiographical lampoon, Roughing It is rich with raucous good humor and delightfully skewed insight into history. Featuring an all-star cast including Emmy-nominee Adam Arkin (Northern Exposure), Oscar and Golden Globe-nominee Eric Roberts (The Odyssey), Charles Martin Smith (P.T. Barnum), and Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe-nominee Ned Beatty (Gulliver’s Travels), it reminds you how enchanting the past can be if you’re traveling with the right writer.