Richard Thomas has not one but two big shoes to fill when he goes out on the road this summer in a celebrated one-man show. The Emmy Award winner and Tony Award nominee is portraying the great American writer Mark Twain in a play written and performed for decades by the late Hal Holbrook. One of his stops will be in Alabama
The actor who made his name portraying John Boy on TV’s “The Waltons,” will bring his Mark Twain show to The Von Braun Center in December. After “The Waltons,” Thomas became a Broadway mainstay. Thomas jokes that Holbrook had 50 years to settle into the role and he has only a year or so. “I have the advantage on him that he started when he was 30 and he was pretending to be an old man. I’m 74 so I’m right there. That’s the one area where I’m up on him.”
Thomas immediately accepted the offer to star in the 90-minute “Mark Twain Tonight!” that tours more than a dozen states this summer and fall before wondering what he’d gotten himself into…