Review: ‘Big River’ a musical journey with Jim and Huck Finn at Mercury Theater

In the mid-1980s, Broadway made an effort to recruit songwriters from Nashville and producers happened on a man named Roger Miller, at that point best known for penning the song “King of the Road,” a crossover smash that was inspired by a yellow sign on a barn west of Chicago (”Trailers for sale or rent”) and that had made No. 1 on the U.S. country charts and No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Miller was tasked with writing the music for a new musical adaptation of Mark Twain’s 1884 novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and, as you can currently hear at Chicago’s Mercury Theater, the score of the resultant “Big River,” as the show is commonly known, was a pretty stunning feat for a self-taught, first-time musical composer who grew up dirt poor, as he often explained.

The show, which featured the actor John Goodman and won 7 Tony Awards including best score and musical, is filled with rousing and notably varied ballads and anthems including “Muddy Water,” “River in the Rain,” “Waitin’ for the Light to Shine,” “Leavin’s Not the Only Way to Go” and “Free at Last.” Broadway loved Miller and he surely would have scored many more hit shows but, alas, he died of lung cancer just a few years later at the age of just 56. “Big River” was his only show.

Twain’s story of Huck, Tom Sawyer and the runaway slave Jim reflects its time in language and focus: notwithstanding his progressive values for his era, Twain cast the story as a coming-of-age for Huck, who is at the center of the narrative, and not Jim. And, of course, Twain’s choice of language often has led to the book being banned in schools (that was true immediately upon publication), even as its many progressive admirers also have cited its willingness to deal with race and racism along with the then-traditional adventure-caper-comedy fusion as part of why it deserves to be seen as one of the great American novels.

As penned by William Hauptman, “Big River” is, all in all, pretty faithful to the novel. And while the show was everywhere in the 1980s and 1990s, it’s rarely seen today for all the same reasons as the source novel remains controversial. Not everyone is willing to put it in the context of its time.

But the Mercury’s young Black artistic director Christopher Chase Carter has taken on this difficult piece, to his credit. His main asset is an actor, Curtis Bannister, who truly is as fine a Jim as you’ll ever see or hear, and a performer with both an operatic voice and the kind of resolve the role needs.

Carter has foregrounded Jim far more than was previously typical, even in places where he does not get much help from the material, and Carter’s made a notably successful effort to emphasize the pain inherent to the story by moving swiftly back and forth between musical numbers, rarely pausing for any applause. The musical director, Malcolm Ruhl, also has slightly adapted the orchestrations to emphasize the folkic tones of Miller’s music for his small but poignant live ensemble, minus the brassier and more percussive sounds first heard on Broadway.

I just wish Carter and Ruhl had gone yet further with those very smart ideas, perhaps by better integrating the musicians into the storytelling but definitely by better emphasizing the changes wrought upon Huck by the his oft-traumatic adventures. Eric Amundson, who plays Huck, is still in college, Equity card notwithstanding, and his career in musicals carries much promise. He’s a fine singer but he also needs to focus more on the price paid by what his crucial character sees on the river, and how he sees that can never be unseen.

That emotional key needed further development elsewhere in the cast, too, even though I mostly enjoyed the comedic, character work by the likes of Callan Roberts (who plays Tom Sawyer), David Stobbe and Gabriel Fries. The production values are decent, too: Jacqueline and Richard Penrod squeeze their vistas out of every available inch of space at the Mercury. But I think this show should have struck its own way far more.

Carter has started creating a revisionist “Big River.” If he took bigger risks and maybe got permission for some more structural revisions, he could help this show really shed its dated patina and bring Miller’s astonishing songwriting skills to a new generation.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

Review: “Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (3 stars)

When: Through June 11

Where: Mercury Theater Chicago, 3745 N. Southport Ave.

Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

Tickets: $39-$85 at mercurytheatrechicago.com