Deep Nerve the Boys in Autumn

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are America's foremost symbols of boyhood optimism, of romantic dreaming at the age when all life's options lie open. Bernard Sabath's The Boys in Autumn imagines those Mark Twain characters as disillusioned middle-aged men. The youths who fantasized becoming outlaws have done just that: Tom has a guilty secret that sent him wandering; Huck has a guilty secret that made him a recluse. On an afternoon in the Roaring Twenties they meet again and, after sputtering mistrust, struggle to renew a feeling of blood brotherhood in boundless adventure.

When the show opened on Broadway last week, many appalled theatergoers demanded, Who is Bernard Sabath and how dare he defile these golden scamps? That outrage underscores how deep a nerve the playwright is aiming for. If life has so disappointed Huck and Tom, the epitomes of hope, how can a spectator not be plunged into pessimism about his own unfulfilled ambitions? The execution is not quite so imaginative as the premise. Tom (John Cullum) and Huck (George C. Scott) are both using assumed names, so it takes a long, creaky while for them to acknowledge each other as they circle the riverbank lookout of Michael Miller's evocatively sylvan set. Their reminiscences are not rich enough: it would help if they had led more complicated lives.

But their confessions fit Twain's characters. His Huck was a fierce individualist and a true obsessive, altogether capable of having turned into a bookish Bible thumper. Tom was a rule bender and a blamer of others, entirely likely to feel self-pity rather than remorse for the sexual crimes Sabath attributes to him. This plausibility is enhanced by masterly acting. Cullum ingratiatingly wheedles, brays and whines as Sawyer. As Huck, Scott combines the stern propriety of the convert to civilization with the lone wolf's fearsome force of nature. W.A.H. III