The Diaries Of Adam And Eve

The Diaries of Adam and Eve - A Review by George Fleeton

Mark Twain, who had earlier created Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, published at the age of 70 his Extracts from Adam’s Diary and Eve’s Diary.

These were just two of a whole series of interrelated texts which underlined his literary reputation as a great humorist.

He bragged that these diaries had been translated from the original manuscripts, found in the Garden of Eden. Lots of people believed him, and he died chuckling 102 years ago.

Mark Twain's humour has lasted well beyond his grave

If you have ever read these texts, it is impossible to re-read the Book of Genesis with a straight face, and not just because of the absence of God the Creator in Twain’s imagination.

As a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, prior to the American Civil War, he claimed he got personally and familiarly acquainted with all the different variations of human nature that are to be found in fiction, biography and history.

After that War, he then travelled, for over 40 years, in his trademark white linen suit and cigar, delivering satirical lectures worldwide, taking a leaf from Dicken’s similar enterprise.

In fact, the parallels between his life and that of Charles Dickens are uncanny, and one wonders if anyone has ever done them justice in the performing arts.

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After giving us I, Elizabeth a year ago and Austen’s Women in November, St Alban’s based actor and producer Rebecca Vaughan quickly returned to Down Arts Centre (DAC) on January 22 as Eve, in Elton Townend Jones’ adaptation of Mark Twain’s texts, presented as The Diaries of Adam and Eve.

This performance was beset with some technical problems and initially looked and sounded a bit strained.
But both actors soon climbed over that hurdle and by the time we reached Eve’s closing monologue on her love for a sleeping Adam balance was restored and a modicum of dramatic truth was attained.

But this was still not the Rebecca Vaughan who inspired local audiences earlier as Elizabeth and as several of the female characters in Jane Austen’s novels.

The root problem in this production was that the Mark Twain works of a hundred years ago are too lightweight, slight and unfamiliar as texts for drama, in that they have been surpassed and overtaken by developments since then in all kinds of media and performing arts.

Add to that an adaptation that creaked and groaned under the strain of inexperience and a discernible lack of conviction in the source material.

The dialogues between the world’s first couple did not sparkle, there was no palpable insight conveyed about what Mark Twain was up to, and Adam’s Hawaiian shirt was a no-no.

Interestingly the only reading material in paradise was that week’s Down Recorder (two copies to boot) and, once banished after the incident with the apple, their place of punishment was Downpatrick. Nice touch, but there simply weren’t enough of them.

The strength of Vaughan’s performances, as previously witnessed last year, was greatly diluted by the inadequacies of the piece, and there was no excuse for the pile of technical rubbish lying visibly on the floor of the auditorium, stage left.

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Bobbie Hanvey’s exhibition of 78 photographs, About Faces, both monochrome and colour, is fascinating.
It’s free to see, and runs in the Down Arts Centre until February 25.
All the portraits are for sale.

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The 84th Academy Awards’ nomination of Terry George’s live action short film The Shore is well deserved, and its Oscar fate will be known here in the early hours of February 27.
Reviewed in this column last April, I had occasion to say that the scenes dealing with the mussel-picking and its dramatic aftermath, shot on the shore between the tides off Coney Island looking west towards Killough, were excellent, familiar and simply part of who and what we are round here.

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Mozart’s final opera The Magic Flute (1791), arriving in Downpatrick on February 11, has been moved from DAC to the Great Hall in the Downshire Hospital, Ardglass Road, because the demand for tickets has outstripped the capacity of the new auditorium at Scotch Street.

This is Dublin-based Opera Theatre Company’s touring production (they were here a year ago with PasqualE).

Magic Flute is directed by Co. Down’s own Annilese Miskimmon, and includes, in a cast of eleven singers, soprano Emma Morwood and baritone Nathan Morrison, both from Belfast.

Some tickets are still available from DAC, telephone 028 4461 0747.
More information on www.downartscentre.com