R‑Rated Twain
Mark Twain House
Hartford, Conn.
Oct. 19
Mark Twain is well known for his classic literary novels, but I didn’t know that his talents extended into the more risqué writing style as well. So I was intrigued by the premise of an “R‑Rated Twain” show that the Mark Twain House put on last Thursday.
The evening began with the finals of a “Hartford on the Rocks” mixology competition. Over the last few months, local breweries, mixologists and other drink experts have been going head to head at Mark Twain house events, where patrons sample various brews and decide upon the winner.
I had the fortune of trying the cocktail creations of Drink Mechanics. Co-founder Aaron Stepka was on hand to describe the sample drink called “Barely Enough” — named after Twain’s famous line, “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.” It starts with rye whiskey, and is infused with gala apples, local honey, ginger, lemon and cardamom. The apple left a refreshing taste on my tongue after the whiskey passed, while the cardamom gave it a surprising kick.
Drink Mechanics was born out of the pandemic. Covid put Stepka out of work, but it also made the state change its rules around alcohol. To keep people at home and quarantining, Connecticut allowed for alcohol to be delivered to home addresses for the first time. Stepka and his partner saw a business opportunity. They began delivering their special brand of cocktails using an ice cream truck. Before long they were canning the drinks and selling them in stores.
Stepka told me that was only the beginning. He and his partner have signed a lease to transform the former Morton’s Steakhouse in downtown Hartford into their permanent home, complete with space for a bar and entertainment. They’re targeting early summer 2024 as their opening date.
Once I was sufficiently buzzed, I slid into my seat in the Twain House’s auditorium to listen to members of Sea Tea Improv read some of Twain’s most salacious writings. Twain is well known for his biting wit, tackling the injustices of his day such as racial discrimination and imperialism. But he was also a gifted humorist, writing often for no other reason than to make his readers laugh.
The presentation kicked off with Twain’s observations about what he politely described as “self-abuse.” While that may seem tame to us in the aftermath of prime-time television contests about the subject, I imagined listening to the same speech at a time when women were legitimately expected to be covered from neck to ankle.
The members of Sea Tea Improv also read from Twain’s autobiography, where he ripped into his friends and enemies alike and provided some of his most playfully wicked sarcasm.
Here is what they read from Twain’s take on Teddy Roosevelt:
Our people adore this show charlatan as perhaps no imposter of this brood has been adored since the golden calf! So it is to be expected that the nation will want him back again after he is done hunting other wild animals heroically in Africa. With the safeguard and advertising equipment of a park of artillery and a brass band.
Twain delighted in describing bodily functions in artful, painful detail. He wrote an ode to farts, as well as a poem about constipation.
My favorite act of the night as the recitation of Twain’s Letters from the Earth, where he describes the “competence” of men as they age when compared to women. Twain wrote:
But man is only briefly competent, and only then in the moderate measure applicable to the word in the sex’s case. He is competent from the age of 16 or 17, thenceforth for another 35 years. After 50, his performance is of poor quality. The intervals between are wide, and the satisfaction is of no great value to either party.
The evening concluded with a reading of Mark Twain: Ladies Man by playwright David Ryan Polgar. It was surprising to see how well Twain translated into a modern context, which only speaks more highly about the timelessness of his talent — and of fart jokes.
NEXT
The Mark Twain House hosts Robert Engel for his lecture, Lurking, There, in the Underbrush: The Gilded Age in the Adirondacks.
Jamil goes to Sea Tea Improv to watch the performers on their home turf.
