STAGE REVIEW : ‘Big River’ Runs Through Southland Halls

“Big River” is certainly taking its time, approaching Los Angeles.

While it’s not a great musical, it did win seven Tonys in 1985, and it’s based on a beloved classic, “Huckleberry Finn.” Could the problem be that the only star names attached to it were Mark Twain’s and composer Roger Miller’s? Are we that shallow?

Earlier incarnations of the show played La Jolla and Costa Mesa, but it wasn’t until last weekend that “Big River” finally meandered as close to Los Angeles as Pasadena--and even there, it stayed only two nights. During the next week, this “River” will briefly flow into Palm Desert, Fullerton and Malibu, but then it will wind its way to Visalia and San Luis Obispo without making an appearance in Los Angeles.

Maybe it heard about the Los Angeles River and realized that big rivers dry up in these parts.

Judging from its appearance at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Saturday, “Big River” hasn’t dried up, but neither is it the natural wonder that you might expect from an adaptation of one of the mightiest of American novels.

Miller’s score is erratic--and, even at its most lyrical, not particularly dramatic, so we’re left to wonder what this version is supposed to add to “Huckleberry Finn” that will compensate for the inevitable abridging. Competing in our minds with its own source material, “Big River” is bound to come up second-best.

Nevertheless, the current production--despite a paucity of major-league credits in the program bios--is hard to fault. Although it originated at the Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse in Rock Island, Ill., and is scheduled to play in 125 cities through May, most of the talent is first-rate.

One might expect a bus-and-truck company to have difficulty adapting the “Big River” set--with Huck’s and Jim’s raft drifting around the front of the stage--to 125 different locations. But the raft was hardly becalmed in Pasadena. A couple of light cues were late, and the show sometimes sounded overmiked, but at least we could make out most of the lyrics--which is more than can be said for some of the productions of the California Music Theatre, which is based in this same auditorium.

As Huck and Jim, Ty Hreben and Mark Lawrence sing beautifully. Furthermore, Hreben has an appealingly crooked smile and a gangly, quasi-adolescent stance, and Lawrence was able to project more than a glimmer of Jim’s anguish over the great gulf of Pasadena Civic’s oversized orchestra pit.

The smaller roles are capably filled, and Jonathan Swoboda’s musical direction is largely on target. The costumes are from the original designs by Patricia McGourty, and Thomas M. Beall’s sets follow much of Heidi Landesmann’s original design, departing most notably in the use of a scrim that depicts a map of the Mississippi River area, not a gilded picture frame. Curt Wollan directed.

At McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, Friday at 8 p.m., (619) 340-2787; Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton, Saturday at 8 p.m., (714) 773-3371; Smothers Theatre in Malibu, Sunday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Monday at 8 p.m., (213) 456-4522; Visalia Convention Center, next Tuesday at 8 p.m., (805) 546-3286; Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, Oct. 5 at 8 p.m., (805) 546-3131.