Mark Twain comes to life in Beaver Creek

The wit, humor and biting observations of Mark Twain come to life Feb. 3 at the Vilar Performing Arts Center in Beaver Creek as Richard Thomas transforms into the legendary author and social commentator.

Thomas is probably best known for playing John-Boy in “The Waltons,” which led him to win an Emmy and receive two Golden Globe nominations. He also starred in the 1990 television mini-series adaptation of Stephen King’s “It” and played Special Agent Frank Gaad on FX’s “The Americans.”

Since August, he has been performing Hal Holbrook’s one-man “Mark Twain Tonight.” Holbrook created the play, performed it for almost 60 years and didn’t want anyone else to perform it. He passed away in 2021, and Thomas is the only actor authorized to enact the award-winning play; Holbrook’s estate contacted Thomas toward the end of his “To Kill a Mockingbird” tour, saying Holbrook would have been happy for Thomas to take over the role.

“I said ‘yes’ because it’s marvelous material, and it’s a great time for Mark Twain to come out again,” Thomas said. “There’s a lot of his political and religious satire, which is very germane today. It really gets people riled up, and some people are taken aback by it, which is great because Twain is sort of an equal opportunity satirist and offender. He’ll poke anybody’s balloon.”

A lot of research went into the original production, and then Thomas did his own.

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“It’s finding the way in to the character so that you feel that you can live within the character and not just sort of perform it,” he said. “It was easy with Twain because Twain is so present as a personality in his writings, so that when you’re speaking his work, you’re not just giving his ideas to the audience. You’re giving the weight of his full, rich, wonderful personality to the audience. That made the process delightful and easier than I thought it would be.”

In addition to Twain’s religious and political satire, he had great tales from the silver-mining lands of Nevada and California, in addition to a ghost story that was told to him as a child. Of course, the play contains plenty of “Huckleberry Finn,” which always resonates with audiences, Thomas said.

“That is very beautiful and fun to do,” he said about “Huckleberry Finn.” “And there’s all that humor about himself going out to get rich in California, which, of course, he never did because he was not a very good silver miner at all.”

Thomas considers Twain to be the first world-famous stand-up comedian and the first international American celebrity who wasn’t a politician.

He chooses material based on what he thinks will resonate with audiences.

“When you inherit this show from Hal, what you get is different cards, which is like all of these wonderful pieces of Twain’s that he put together, and you can shuffle it out from night to night and do different things. He gives you the full deck, and you pick what you want. It’s like make your own adventure,” he said. “It gives the actor a wonderful creative stake in the show.”

Thomas especially loves Twain’s maximalist qualities.

“He has a big personality, big likes, big dislikes. He’s very passionate and hilariously funny but mean and also kind at the same time. I love the richness of his contradictions and his genius. I love his understanding about the American vernacular. It’s so delicious to speak,” he said. “He not only belongs to us as an American genius, but he is us in so many ways. He embodies so many of the aspirations, shortcomings, contradictions — the light and shadow of the American character, at least from the mid-19th century up to the present. We have many new voices that constitute what it means to be American, but Twain is absolutely among them. And maybe the first among them, in terms of when he started. He not only talks about us, he is us. He holds a wonderful mirror up to the audience.”