On The Mark Holbrook Convincing In His One-Man Show, ‘Mark Twain Tonight!’

Take cover, people, because Hal Holbrook is teeing off on modern society. And when it comes to teeing off, Holbrook is a world-class, Tony Award-winning master.

“This whole electronic-ization of society is turning people into, you know, children with toys,” said Holbrook, 73, who also has five Emmys to go with his Tony. “There isn’t one person in five who really needs to have a computer they look at all day long. But you get on an airplane and you go into schools and everybody is in front of this TOY, playing with this little screen, and interestingly enough, the people who design these things and sell them, like Bill Gates, they all LOOK like grown-up children …

“And the symbols they put on there to guide us through this wonderland of cartoonery — they’re all childish symbols. The whole damn thing is a TOY!”

Holbrook, on the phone from L.A., pauses and laughs.

“I suppose I sound a little cranky,” he said in his utterly unmistakable baritone. “But I’m getting crankier as I get older. A lot of people do get crankier as they get older, because you get more impatient with what you see. The longer you live, the more perspective you have.”

And besides, Holbrook has the greatest role model in the world when it comes to cranky old men: Mark Twain, who kept getting crankier and crankier until he became America’s voice, America’s conscience and America’s literary treasure.

Holbrook has been doing his one-man Mark Twain show, “Mark Twain Tonight!” since 1955. Since then, the show has become a Broadway hit, a television special and an indispensable part of American culture. For many people, Hal Holbrook IS Mark Twain, and Mark Twain was nothing if not a sharp-tongued critic of his society. And, as Holbrook’s show makes clear, most of those criticisms are still apt today, because America’s problems remain the same, especially the No. 1 problem.

“Racism remains the greatest problem our democracy has ever faced, and we still haven’t solved it yet,” said Holbrook. “And now we have this politically correct blanket we have thrown over everybody so you can’t really say what’s on your mind, people are not allowed to speak their minds truly, so we are doing what Mark Twain described as the Silent Lie. We are silently lying by remaining quiet. … Twain is an antidote to that, because he cuts right through all that crap and gets to the heart of it.”

Racism remains the No. 1 topic of “Mark Twain Tonight!” just as it was in 1967 when the CBS special was such a sensation. But Holbrook has added far more Twain material since then (all from Twain’s own writings), including many pieces suited to the political atmosphere of our time. He is especially pleased with some Twain-isms that he discovered about a year ago.

“So I took this minute-and-a-half piece I’d been doing for a number of years, and I spliced this new stuff into it and ended up with a number about six or seven minutes long on Congress and politics in Washington,” said Holbrook. “I really had great fun doing it and the audience really enjoys it. And suddenly, it’s like what’s happening in Washington this past year. They walked right into this number! It was ready made for them, and they stepped right into the hole and down they went. It was perfect.”

He also knew that he needed some material that related even more directly to the Clinton impeachment mess.

“So I started pawing around, and bang, right there, I found this selection from the New York Evening Post in 1879 called `Running for President,”’ said Holbrook. “It starts out, `I’ve pretty much made up my mind to run for the presidency, because what this country needs is a candidate who cannot be injured by an investigation of his past history …”’

Like Twain himself, Holbrook is becoming more prolific with age. He said he is busier now than ever in his whole life. He just completed a film role in “The Bachelor,” a comedy with Chris O’Donnell, Renee Zellweger and Peter Ustinov. Two days after filming wrapped, he embarked on his “Mark Twain Tonight!” tour.

Meanwhile, he has been devoting his mornings to re-learning the lines for the role of Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman.” Brian Dennehy is taking his smash Chicago production to New York, but Dennehy has a conflict for a few weeks in March. So Holbrook, who had his own triumph as Willy Loman two years ago in a national tour, will take over for those weeks.

A week after that, Holbrook goes into rehearsals of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger in Washington, D.C. He plays Shylock, an ambitious undertaking, but Holbrook has already tackled and succeeded in perhaps the greatest Shakespearean role of all, the title role in “King Lear,” at the Old Globe in San Diego in 1993.

Although Holbrook has had juicy roles in the films “Wall Street,” “The Firm,” “The Great White Hope” and “All the President’s Men” (he played Deep Throat), he said that he has never had a movie role that even came close to his best stage roles.

“It’s pretty hard to exceed King Lear,” conceded Holbrook.

Meanwhile, he believes that “Mark Twain Tonight!” keeps gaining depth and quality over thousands of performances.

“I had a chance to look at the 1967 CBS special again,” said Holbrook. “And you know, it’s good, but I just kept thinking, `Gosh, I can do better than that now.”’ That’s what Holbrook is becoming with age - crankier and better.

ON STAGE `Mark Twain Tonight!’ “Mark Twain Tonight!” will be staged Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Spokane Opera House. Tickets are $28 and $21, available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.