Richard Thomas follows in Hal Holbrook’s footsteps in ‘Mark Twain Tonight!’
In the wake of current events, Thomas — best known for playing John-Boy Walton on ‘The Waltons’ — says ‘it’s a good time for Twain to be out there’

While he was out starring in the national tour of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in 2023-24, Richard Thomas took to reading Mark Twain’s iconic novels “Tom Sawyer and “Huckleberry Finn” to help flesh out his performance as Atticus Finch.

Little did Thomas — now starring in a touring revival of Hal Holbrook’s one-man show “Mark Twain Tonight!” — know how unexpectedly prescient those choices would be.

“I revisited both (books),” Thomas explains via phone from his home in New York, “because I felt it would offer a wonderful grounding in the way of life at the time and also in terms of the racial issues and social issues that were still being dealt with in ‘Mockingbird’s’ time. I found reading those books as I was doing ‘Mockingbird’ to be enormously enriching to me.

“Towards the end of the (‘Mockingbird’) tour, they reached out to me from Hal’s estate and said: ‘We really think we’d like to revive ‘Mark Twain Tonight!’ and we know Hal would’ve been happy for you to do it. So, are you interested?’ That came out of the blue … and I jumped at it, both feet.

Holbrook premiered "Mark Twain Tonight!," comprised of the Missouri-born author and humorist's writings and speeches, in 1954 in Pennsylvania. It became one of the most enduring works of his career, premiering off-Broadway in 1959 and on Broadway in 1966 and later filmed for an Emmy Award-nominated 1967 Broadcast on CBS. Holbrook — who died in 2021 at the age of 95 — also released three "Mark Twain Tonight!" albums.

Thomas' first exposure to the piece was that CBS broadcast, which he watched with his family when he was 16. "It was absolutely wonderful," says Thomas, 74, who never saw Holbrook — with whom he had "a warm, collegial relationship" — perform the show live. "It was so interesting, and I just loved it like everybody did.

"So I always have Hal's performance in my head, even all these years later. Whatever I do, however I shuffle the deck, I always have Hal in mind. He's my Jiminy Cricket — I've got Hal on one shoulder, Twain on the other."

"But no pressure," Thomas adds, with a laugh.

He makes clear, too, that the real star of the show is Twain's verbiage.

"I got that suit, I got that cigar, and once that moustache goes on, baby, there it is. The moustache does all the work. I'm just saying the words. He's really not that hard to embody. He wraps himself around you as a character."

In the wake of current events, meanwhile, Thomas — best known for his Emmy Award-winning role as John-Boy Walton on CBS' "The Waltons" — is confident that "it's a good time for Twain to be out there." His writings and presentations poked fun at and even railed against norms of his times during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s and the turn of the century, speaking his own kind of truth to power as he aimed barbs at politicians, religion and society.

"Twain is evergreen," Thomas explains. "He was always holding a mirror up to us, for better and worse, warts and all, our better selves and our shadow selves and our American selves. He's quintessentially American himself in that regard. He embodies all of the contradictions and passions and shortcomings and optimism of Americans.

"So he feels very alive in the language."

And, Thomas adds, he's not the only one to feel that Twain's words seem as relevant now as they did more than 100 years ago.

"People ask me frequently after the show whether I've written something and put it in, or if we stuck something in to make it (current) — about the monarchy of the rich and powerful, sitting on the throne, or things like that," he says. "I tell them: 'No. It's absolutely Twain. He's saying the same things about the same kind of situations we find ourselves in now, just a different iteration of it.'

"And he's an equal opportunity offender, right? Everybody knows he's a writer, but not as many people know he was a wonderful performer … like, the first stand-up. Just when he's made you comfortable about something, he's gonna stick a pin in your balloon about something else. When we get into his religious satires, in some parts of the country, it gets very quiet. (laughs) But that's part of the joy of it. You're talking to people directly about things they engage with every day.

"And it's always got humor. That's the beauty of that spoonful of sugar that makes his medicine go down. No matter how serious the subject, you always are trying to make it as entertaining as possible."

Thomas will be on the 48-date "Mark Twain Tonight!" tour until February, when he returns to New York to begin rehearsals for David Lindsay-Abaire's new play "The Balusters" at the Manhattan Theatre Club. But he hopes to return to the Twain show at some point, "shuffling the deck" with more material from the canon to keep Twain's words and character alive for generations to come.

"Basically, what Hal did was curate an evening very much like Twain did. Hal followed in Twain's footsteps, and I'm following in their footsteps," Thomas says. "I'm really thrilled to at least be carrying it forward, and I hope there will be somebody who will do it after me, too."

Richard Thomas stars in "Mark Twain Tonight!" at 7 p.m. Oct. 19 at the Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit. 313-872-1000 or broadwayindetroit.com.

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