A Failed Tale

Samuel Clemens prided himself on his highly developed skill for making the facts fit his fiction--including facts about himself. Even in his own day, most people assumed that Mark Twain (a riverboat term meaning two fathoms) was his real name, not a nom de plume he brazenly stole from a mediocre writer whom Clemens despised.

So, what is one to make of Dennis Dalrymple’s new play, “Mark Twain in Hawaii,” at the Synthaxis Theatre Company, and its claim that it is “based on fact”?

Dalrymple has Twain (William L. Rose) visit Hawaii in 1896--30 years after he was stationed there as a newspaper correspondent--as part of a worldwide lecture tour to pay off debts. From the “based on facts” statement in the show’s press material to the detailed explanations in both the program and the play’s exposition-heavy text, it seems that Twain spent a day and night at Honolulu’s Hotel Gloria as a guest of old friend and now the stiff old Rev. Dole (V.C. Pat Jones Jr.) and his aptly named wife, Auntie Victoria (Tessa Shaw).

It appears to be the classic confrontation between devout Christian missionaries and wily skeptic Twain, who finds that he has to give his lecture in the safe confines of Dole’s church because of a local cholera epidemic.

Fine, except virtually nothing in “Mark Twain in Hawaii” ever happened.

Unlike the superb “An American Romance,” which uses the same stage and set, and also sets down American literary heroes in a historical setting for some comic drama, “Mark Twain in Hawaii” fudges the facts bizarrely, in a way that even Twain wouldn’t find amusing. Though Twain did visit Hawaii during his lecture tour, it was in August 1895--before the tragic death of his first daughter, whom Dalrymple has already dead before his play’s action. And because of that cholera epidemic, Twain was prevented from going ashore.

Which, when you think about it, would make a fine setup for a play.

It’s indicative of this show’s sloppiness that, even if there is a deliberate, Twain-like strategy here to reel off a tall tale, you’d never know it. That’s because the drama itself is played with deadly earnest under Bradford Mays’ woefully hapless direction. Often lining up his actors in wax museum formation, Mays seems to have discouraged the breathing of life into these characters.

Even Michael Ordona, with the only juicy role as the rightly outraged young Hawaiian, Kimo, who feels the Christians have suppressed his culture, is dramatically inert. Dalrymple’s poorly crafted scenes often sound like a compilation of “Best of Twain” quote lines.

Dalrymple even gets his happy ending wrong. His Twain finally inspires Kimo to learn, read and teach. In fact, Twain had become so cynical by this point that he thought no amount of learning would save “the damned human race.”

* “Mark Twain in Hawaii,” Synthaxis Theatre Company, Lankershim Arts Center, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. 2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Ends Sept. 21. $7.50 (818) 752-2253.