\t\t\t\t\t\t[aesop_gallery pslightbox=”on” transition=”crossfade” galleryType=”grid” id=”844″]\n
\u201cRANDY KIM PLAYS MARK TWAIN TO A T\u2026.Seldom has a local actor \u2018disappeared\u2019 so completely and become the character he was playing\u2026Kim looked like Twain and convinced me he sounded like him. It is a measure of Kim\u2019s expertise that he couldn\u2019t have looked the way he did onstage and sound any other way.\u201d \u201cIT WAS JUST AS IF TWAIN WERE ALIVE AND IN ISLES\u2026.If you missed it, you missed an amazing event\u2026We had been warned that it would not really be Mark Twain but a remarkable actor named Randy Kim impersonating him. If that was true, \u2018impersonating\u2019 is the wrong word. Randy Kim became Mark Twain. The physical resemblance\u2014at least to the photos we\u2019ve all seen\u2014was almost disturbing\u2026His movements were those of an old man too. When he sat down, he sat down cautiously. When he smiled, it was often with head turned downward, as though amused inwardly at some joke his young audience couldn\u2019t possibly catch. Occasionally he gave a perfunctory glance at the rostrum where a prepared lecture seemed to await, but he never read from it. Perhaps most uncanny of all were his pauses. Of course, there were the pauses for comic effect, as when he would milk an anecdote line by hilarious line. But sometimes, even in the middle of an anecdote, the old man would gaze out at nothing, in silence, as though his mind had wandered. In such moments it was almost impossible to believe that the ancient humorist wasn\u2019t living, though in his decline, before our eyes\u2026For the most part, the material was funny\u2014some hilarious. Twain\u2019s caustic irreverence, his bitterness, his self-mockery were there in abundance. Kim\u2019s timing and inflection of the Mark Twain humor were impeccable.\u201d \u201cIt was almost beyond belief, but from the moment Randy Kim came out on the improvised stage, waving his big black cigar, I had the uncanny feeling that Mark Twain had somehow invaded Kim\u2019s body\u2026somehow taken possession of him. It was almost creepy, but the whole audience was absolutely spellbound\u2014which is a clich\u00e9, but in this instance\u2026they were\u2014we were\u2014absolutely under a spell woven by Randy Kim.\u201d [aesop_gallery pslightbox=”on” transition=”crossfade” galleryType=”grid” id=”844″] Review Excerpts \u201cRANDY KIM PLAYS MARK TWAIN TO A T\u2026.Seldom has a local actor \u2018disappeared\u2019 so completely and become the character he was playing\u2026Kim looked like Twain and convinced me he sounded like him. It is a measure of Kim\u2019s expertise that he couldn\u2019t have looked the way he did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":268,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-performances"],"metadata":{"_wp_old_date":["2021-11-28"]},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\u2013Phil Mayer, HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN (1\/8\/1968)<\/strong> <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\u2013Joseph Maltby, HONOLULU ADVERTISER (1\/8\/1968)<\/strong> <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\u2013Jeanne Booth Johnson, MAUI NEWS (3\/27\/1968)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"