The Essence of Method Acting

By now, Hal Holbrook couldn’t stop being Mark Twain any more than Tony Bennett could stop singing “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.”

Holbrook has been doing his stage portrayal of the curmudgeonly American author for 38 years--sending out tart one-liners from the boards of high school auditoriums, launching into uproarious anecdotes in Las Vegas nightclubs, peering glinty-eyed from the stage of a Broadway theater.

With makeup that takes four hours to apply--deep wrinkles, thick, white eyebrows, a walrus mustache--Holbrook is uncannily Twain-like, critics say.

“Holbrook hasn’t actually become Twain, but he has reached a level of such commanding spontaneity that it nearly amounts to the same thing,” critic James Lardner said in 1981.

By most accounts, Holbrook has only honed the role--which he performs 20 or 25 times a year--more sharply yet.

Since his first one-man performance, at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania in 1954, he has accumulated about 12 hours of Twain material. No performance is the same, as the actor shuffles lines and stories in and out of the performance, depending on the nature of the audience and the mood of the times.

No doubt, when he takes the stage at 8 p.m. Friday--it will be something like performance number 1,800--in the Bridges Auditorium of the Claremont Colleges, the material will be in keeping with the political season. Politicians were among Twain’s favorite targets. Maybe Holbrook will utter Twain zingers like this: “Washington is a stud farm for every jackass in the country.” Or: “I never vote for politicians--it only encourages them.”

Tickets, ranging from $18 to $29, are on sale at the Bridges Auditorium box office, 450 N. College Way, Claremont.