TV Reviews : Wistful Version of Twain’s ‘Diaries of Adam and Eve’

Out of the raging darkness of Mark Twain’s pessimism in his later years blossomed a curious little novelette called “Eve’s Diary.” The passages have a certain wistfulness about them, unlike anything Twain ever wrote.

Actor-adapter David Birney has combined “Eve’s Diary” with an earlier Garden of Eden piece by Twain called “Extracts From Adam’s Diary” into “American Playhouse’s” endearing “The Diaries of Adam and Eve” (at 9 tonight on Channels 28 and 15).

Birney and Meredith Baxter Birney portray the universe’s first lovers as Twain fashioned them--Eve is wiser, smarter and much more eager for a relationship than Adam, who is exasperated by Eve’s relentless talk and who doesn’t fall in love with her until after the great Fall and exile from the Garden.

The Birneys’ performance of Adam and Eve is a reminder of Twain’s storytelling genius and how much fun it can be to hear Twain read aloud.

The show was shot in front of a live theater audience (which we occasionally see) and staged with the austerity of a stylized theatrical presentation. Eve wears a white dress, naturally, and Adam is in formal evening wear with red suspenders.

The actors are flavorful, as in apple cider. But this is an ethereal joke, after all, and it’s difficult keeping this precious balloon inflated for an hour. Director William Woodman does sustain a nice, pungent, ironic tone, particularly over Eve’s predilection for fresh fruit and the birth of the unseen Cain and Abel (dramatized by bassinets).

For Mark Twain--the most American of all writers--his Eve here is the epitome of all that Twain’s wife, Livy, had taught him about women in 36 years of marriage. As Eve muses near the end, with will-of-the-wisp beguilement:

“Then why is it that I love him? Merely because he is masculine, I think. . . . But I am only a girl, and the first that has examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience I have not got it right.”