Stage and television series vets Hal Linden and Marilu Henner are spending the next couple of weeks at music stands performing – well, frequently reading from – The Journals of Adam & Eve. If it were possible for them to bottle the combined charm they bring to the 70-minute enterprise, they’d give Chanel N°5 a run for its long-run perfume-counter life.
Playwright Ed. Weinberger — whose television credits include The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, and The Cosby Show, and whose Two Jews Talking (with Linden) ran off-Broadway in 2022 — has adapted Mark Twain’s beloved The Diaries of Adam and Eve for the stage, perhaps changing “Diaries” to “Journals” as an indication of any liberties he’s taken.
All the same, Twain’s and Weinberger’s voices blend musically from the get-go, right from when Adam enters in black and announces, “Much to my amazement, I was born a full-grown man.” He discourses with light-hearted awe for some time – even chatting about acquiring a taste for cannabis (a Weinberger liberty, apparently), before deciding that his duties, as he sees them, require “an assistant.” He asks God for one.
After God and Adam negotiate a rib, Eve appears in a tight black bodysuit, to confide, “My brain teemed with questions. Where was I? Where had I been up till now? And who was that strange creature standing there in front of me?”
And so it goes: the Genesis story, the manner in which it’s expressed by Twain and Weinberger primarily blithe. It doesn’t take too long before Eve encounters a wily snake and the Tree of Knowledge apple is consumed. As a result, lust is unleashed as is expulsion from Eden. Hmm, is lust the foremost element of knowledge?
Post-garden life goes on, with death, as declared by God, remaining for some time a mystery to the first couple. They bring up sons Cain, who’s brutal, and Abel, who’s loving — losing Abel and so realizing what death is. They grow old together, along the way coming to realize what love is.
Although God has refused to marry them officially – he shuns the assignment – they ultimately understand theirs is, and has been, a marriage. Cutely, Adam had confessed there was much he missed in the early days by explaining that, although he became himself full-grown, he still was only “three years old” and not to be held responsible for what he knows and doesn’t know.
During the sly proceedings, it’s Eve who looks to be the one whose brains are full-grown. Adam is tasked with naming the Eden flora and fauna but is no good at it. Eve executes the naming bulk. She doesn’t quite get around to specifics for genitalia, however, but does eventually, along with Adam, discover their use. Also, while for the most part Adam stays comically perplexed and bombastic, Eve gives signs of being the Earth’s first feminist. Therefore, Twain — born as Samuel Clemens but undoubtedly not yet full-grown (maybe his sense of humor was) — is perhaps our first male feminist.
Although in their relaxed performances — as directed by Amy Anders Corcoran — charm is the overall effect, Henner, forever a subtle firecracker, and Linden, always a model of down-to-earth reassurance, are effortlessly effective at all the emotional revelations Adam and Eve discover for all humanity to experience henceforth. Though placed at separate spots while flipping Weinberger’s pages, the players are always animatedly reflecting. Especially appealing is how they react on beholding each other. Love at first sight? “Nothing could be further from the truth,” Adam insists. “You can say that again,” Eve replies.
It may be that some patrons, listening to and watching what the east of Eden pair learn of life after munching the apple, will (once again?) wonder about the Tree of Knowledge. They may ask themselves why what it confers was intended to be denied man- and womankind. Why did the Bible shapers decide that knowledge, invaluable in daily life, was prohibited and not some other mental asset? Furthermore, many of today’s ticket buyers — worried we’re living amid renewed nationwide stupidity, may cheer themselves up by regarding the development as a yet unrecognized return to Eden.
A final observation: There isn’t a single reference to a fig leaf.
The Journals of Adam & Eve opened July 11, 2024, at the Sheen Center and runs through July 28. Tickets and information: sheencenter.org
