Aside from the accent and speech patterns, etc., I'm curious to know
about the verisimilitude (wish there was a less pretentious-sounding
word for it) of the performance, itself.  I saw HH recently in Keene,
NH.  It was kind of amusing seeing an 80-yr.old doing a convincing
job playing an "older" man of 70!  What I'm curious about is the
content and the stage delivery of his performance.  Some of the
delivery seemed to me to take undue advantage of the lapel
microphone, allowing him to modulate his volume in ways I doubt that
Twain could have done on stage and be heard.  He'd sometimes seem to
mutter funny asides under his breath, and I wonder how Twain could
have pulled that off on stage.  I suppose there are stage techniques
that allow one to "mutter" audibly without microphone help...but not
the way HH did it...at least that was the impression I got.  Also, he
did at least one long reading from HF, acting out the parts fairly
dramatically, voices and all, and I wonder if MT included such
"dramatic readings" in his "lectures"?

Hope I haven't unfairly blasphemed an icon!

Ben
Benjamin N. Wise
Keene State College