Big River Play Analysis

On November 17, 8:00 at night, I attended the musical Big River presented at the Dakota Prairie Playhouse. The show was written by William Hauptman and was presented by DSU students and special guest Keith Hatton. The Dakota Prairie Playhouse’s Theatre has a proscenium theatre space. The theatre was much larger than I had originally thought it would be allowing for a bigger audience that was present that night. The audience itself, from what I can tell, was composed of mostly college students. However, there were a good number of adults who looked like parents or relatives of the actors. Children were also present in the theatre space but mostly were very young and few present, and for good reason considering the play did have some language …show more content…
Huck meets up with runaway slave Jim and they set off down the river in a raft to escape. During the trip Huck and Jim meet up with many different characters including Duke and King, several townsfolk, and Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle. Throughout their journey Huck and Jim begins to understand one another and grow a very close bond. Then King sells Jim to Tom’s uncle where Huck and Tom break Jim out with a daring rescue. When Tom is shot during the rescue Jim lets himself get recaptured to save him. To show his gratitude, Tom’s uncle frees Jim. Jim heads north to raise money to free his …show more content…
His role was mainly comprised of comical value in several of his scenes, but he also proved to be another important character. This role was captured immensely as each scene featuring Tom Sawyer was very funny or allowed the plot to advance sometimes by completely changing the situation. Probably the most important scene Sawyer is present is towards the ending where he is accidently shot, Cole’s performance gives the audience a sense of suspense as they worry and wonder if Tom will be