"...endearing... a reminder of Twain's storytelling genius and how much fun it can be... flavorful as apple cider, pungent, ironic."

- Los Angeles Times

"Sharp and resourceful... played with freshness and theatricality...charming."

- Variety

"Twain makes uses of the original gender models for comic twists on the traditional battle-of-the-sexes theme. But The Diaries of Adam and Eve...veers away from [that] sardonic course. Adam and Eve lose Eden but find contentment and love...It's a touching moment of theatre."

- San Francisco Chronicle

"Wrought with humor and tenderness regarding the love of a man for a woman... moving."

- Hollywood Reporter

"Mark Twain isn't just for Hal Holbrook anymore. David Birney brings Mark Twain's words to life... in a romantic adventure for the ages."

- Times Union, Albany, New York

"...it is marvelously performed...with consummate skill...theatrical and absorbing...terrifically funny."

- The Daily Gazette

Schenectady, New York

"Twain originally wrote the two diaries as separate pieces but Birney has compiled and integrated them brilliantly....Twain's ingenious adaptation of the biblical story...build[s] a relationship between Adam and Eve which is honest and endearing....his witty and insightful nature [uses] a diary format which enables the characters to be touchingly frank and human."

- The Dartmouth

"One can read Twain's words and get a feeling for the story, but when one experiences the words come alive, it takes on a new meaning. Birney has given life to Twain's words in his own special way...[and] performed Twain's humorous tale of the first love with masterful form...The chemistry between Birney and Walsh seemed to be, well...a match made in heaven. Their playful banter was well polished and well received by the audience."

- Palos Verdes News
Wednesday, September 30,1998

Santa Barbara News

by TOM JACOBS

She is curious, intrigued, just a bit afraid.  "I do wonder what it is for," she says, staring intently as she circles her newly discovered companion.  "I never see it do anything."

He is annoyed by all this attention.  "I am not used to company," he declares, making it clear he prefers his solitude.  When he finds himself using the term "we," the realization fills him with shock and horror. "Where did I get that word?" he wonders. "The new creature uses that!"

In the imagination of Mark Twain, Adam and Eve did not exactly "meet cute."

In two separate short stories made up of entries in their respective diaries, the great American humorist suggests they utterly misunderstood one another from the very beginning. But they fell in love anyway, a love "that cannot explain itself, and doesn't need to," as Eve puts it. Twain was anything but a sentimentalist, but he ultimately concluded that love, real love, which grows slowly over the decades, as a couple makes a life together, transcends even the most profound differences.

That message, conveyed through the author's sardonic wit, helps make "The Diaries of Adam and Eve" a slyly amusing and deeply moving piece of theater.

David Birney's skillful adaptation of the Twain stories, which plays through March 30 at the Laurel Theatre in Ventura, superbly balances laughter and lyricism. This utterly engaging work seduces the audience with an ease that would make the sly Satanic snake supremely jealous.

Two series of imaginary diary entries may not be the most promising material to adapt into a theater piece. But Birney, whose stage experience is at least as extensive as his better-known television work, combined the two short works with both a delicate touch and a sure theatrical instinct. This is a play without dialogue: The language consists of Adam (Birney) and Eve (Madylon Brans) reading their diary entries out loud. But their physical interaction is so organic and fluid that, after a few minutes, we're barely aware of the fact they are speaking to us rather than to one another.

Via the alternating, and sometimes intertwined, monologues, the first couple reveal assumptions and attitudes that are quite different, and which often lead to amusing misunderstandings. Their archetypal differences remain recognizable, she wants connection and conversation, he prefers independence and adventure.

The play takes us through the aforementioned early encounters, through their banishment from the Garden of Eden, to the joys and difficulties of parenthood. Early on, their discoveries are joyous ones, as Eve names all the animals and Adam discovers that jumping down a waterfall is tremendous fun. But as they age, they discover something far less easy to accept: the reality of death. In the evening's most touching scene, Adam and Eve gradually realize that Cain, having been beaten by his brother, will never awaken. As their confusion turns to grief, playfulness gives way to poignancy. Our reaction is intensified by the knowledge (which Mr. Birney presents in a prologue) that Twain lost his beloved wife Olivia and all three of their children before his own death.

Mr. Birney, a superb actor, adopts a slight Midwestern drawl as Adam, presumably to draw the connection between the character and Twain. His baffled reactions to Eve's pronouncements are both amusing and endearing. When she gives him his name, he walks back and forth across the stage, trying it on for size, pronouncing it in different ways until he finds a fit he can live with. It's a small but splendid bit of acting, one of many Mr. Birney provides over the course of the two-hour-long, intermissionless evening.

Ms. Brans does very nice work as well. Her Eve is full of infectious enthusiasm as she attempts "to search out the secrets of this world." As she grows into the roles of wife and mother, she radiates blissful contentment. Tracy Strickfaden's Victorian garden set is lovely and evocative. The costumes are simple and elegant: he wears a tux, she a beautiful evening gown.

Besides the biographical information on Twain, Mr. Birney's prologue includes some poems by Yeats, a snippet of "Much Ado About Nothing," an excerpt from Anne Sexton's retelling of the Cinderella story, and "The Owl and the Pussycat." All are variations on the theme of love, or, as Birney more precisely puts it, "What do we really mean when we say to someone, 'I love you?' "

He lets Adam provide a tentative answer. By the end of the play, and their lifetimes, the first man still isn't sure he understands his wife, but he does know one thing: "It is better to live outside the garden with her than inside it without her."

(The Rubicon Theatre Company's production of "The Diaries of Adam and Eve" continues at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday and 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday through March 30 in the Laurel Theatre, 1006 E. Main St. in Ventura. Tickets, which are $23 to $38, may be purchased by calling 667-2900.)

"What do we mean when we say we love someone?" Actor/adaptor/director David Birney asks this vital question in his introduction to "The Diaries of Adam and Eve," a two-character dramatization of Mark Twain's 1890 and 1910 works presented Friday night at the Hartford Stage Company.

For Twain, the separate stories of Adam and Eve served as commentaries on marriage, specifically his own to Olivia Langdon; Birney has seamlessly combined them into a theatrical creation of universal meaning.

When Twain wrote the two "Diaries" he was a literary success but plagued with personal tragedies and financial losses; yet, despite the bitter cynicism that often pervaded his later works, there is the characteristic sense of humor and understanding of life's realities in the "Diaries."

On stage, the familiar biblical figures become truly humanized and timeless.

Soon after her creation, Eve feels "like an experiment," regarding Adam as "a reptile or architecture," in his physical and temperamental differences. For Adam, Eve seems like "the new creature," a unique animal form that he cannot quite comprehend.

During the course of their relationship, beginning in Eden and ending many years later with Eve's death, the two separate solitaries live together in combative but complementary bliss, their life together an adventure of discovery and awareness. Birney... endow[s] Twain's words with dramatic resonance.

In the simply conceived production, wondrously lighted by Robert Mumm, the Garden of Eden is depicted as a sparely constructed gazebo decorated with flowers and greenery and set against an expanse of sky. Of course, there is also a forbidden apple waiting to be picked; but unlike the unknown writer of the Old Testament tale, Twain and Birney make Eve's motivation, her curiosity, the only sensible course of action.

"The Diaries of Adam and Eve" will be performed at the Hartford Stage Company today at 2:30 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Information: (860) 527-5151.

There wasn't a dry eye in the house at the close of the performance of "The Diaries of Adam & Eve," starring David Birney...

Based on Mark Twain's book of the same name, the play takes Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and places them in Niagara Falls. Using a minimalist set comprised of a flower-adorned gazebo and a park bench, it was up to the actors to make the audience believe that the great falls was there, in addition to the animals that God continually creates throughout the play.

Before the text of the play begins, however, a prologue comprised of works by Shakespeare, Yeats, Dickenson, and others set the stage for the main production by offering a various definitions of love. Both comical and touching, the selections were well thought out as a precursor for what Birney refers to as the oldest love story of all time, that of Adam and Eve.

Birney first arranged the production of Twain's tale for PBS's "American Playhouse," and has toured the show at cities and festivals throughout the United States. While the set up is typical teleplay style, it gives the production an intimacy that, along with Twain's prose, keeps the audience hanging on every word.

Certainly everyone knows the story of Adam and Eve, but Twain allowed the story to become more accessible, making it seem much more like a parable than Biblical allegory.

The story begins with the Creation, and includes Eve and Adam with their respective diaries, jotting away their thoughts of everything from Eve's belief that, on the first night at dawn, someone has stolen the moon - to Adam's consternation with Eve for following him around everywhere.

After the two finally meet, Adam remains perturbed with Eve for talking too much, and notes that she insists upon naming all of the animals before he has a chance. By Eve's account, however, Adam is not very good at naming the animals as God creates them, so she feels it is her duty to prevent his embarrassment by being deficient in the creating of names.

As the play progresses, it becomes clear that Twain has molded the story of the first husband and wife to portray a number of idiosyncrasies specific to each gender. For example, Adam portrays Eve as a know-it-all, while Adam is portrayed by Eve as none too bright. Throughout, Eve humorously tries to figure out Adam's purpose. When Eve finally succumbs to the temptation of eating the forbidden apple, she blames it on Adam. The aftermath includes their expulsion from the garden and relocation to Tonawanda, a suburb of Buffalo whose name Twain—a former Buffalo, N.Y., newspaper editor—must have found comical.

Temptation of the flesh is cleverly portrayed as Adam sings "Buffalo Girls" to Eve, and the couple embark upon a dance that apparently represents the Original Sin, as their first son, Cain, appears shortly thereafter.

Adam is unable to categorize Cain, whom Eve "catches" while he is away hunting. One of the program's most hilarious scenes ensues while Birney perfectly portrays the awe which a newborn baby inspires in an first-time father - even one who initially believes the baby to be a tailless bear.

In the long run, as Adam grapples with what type of animal Cain might be, Eve begins to explore the reasons why she loves Adam. In a humorous series of explanations, she notes that there is no specific reason why she loves him, and concludes that it must be something that remains undefined, yet accepted.

True to Biblical lore, Adam and Eve grow old together happily, eventually having nine children. The loss of a child is painfully enacted when Cain murders Abel, the couple's most gentle son. Because it is the first time they experience the death of a human, Adam and Eve believe for days that their son is sleeping with his eyes open. Eventually, when the reality of their son's death hits home, it is a reflection of the injustice every parent must experience when a child's life is shorter than their own.

At the end, after Eve has passed away, Adam realizes that she was an essential part of his being - not just as a mother and wife, but as a partner. The closing line, spoken by Adam at Eve's graveside, shows a man who finally acknowledges that it was better to have lived outside of the Garden with Eve, than to have lived within the Garden without her.

"Wheresoever she was," he said, "There was Eden."

Touching and irreverent, the text of Twain's story is propelled by the moments of hilarity showing the competition and companionship between men and women that has been going on since the beginning of time.

QUICK CENTER FOR THE ARTS—FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY: They were superb in "The Diaries of Adam and Eve," written as two separate pieces by Mark Twain, and integrated on stage by Birney. The actors skillfully prepared the audience for the Twain event by opening the evening with love poems.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens took his famous pseudonym from the leadman's call he knew well as a pilot on the Mississippi. Twain is one of America's most famous writers, known for his humor and entertaining social commentary.

Birney captures Twain's delight in digression, his satire and his refreshing use of language as he takes on the role of the first man and the first husband. Birney steps into the "battle-of-the-sexes" playful and proud, scientific and emotional.

CHESTER : What kind of man was Adam, after he learned he was a man? And what kind of woman was Eve?

Actor David Birney went to some sacred texts to find out— well, two works by Mark Twain —and presents what he learned in "The Diaries of Adam and Eve," which opened yesterday with a matinee at The Miniature Theatre of Chester.

It's a warm and funny story, light and bright.

To create his drama, Birney, an award-winning Broadway and television actor, adapted two pieces Twain wrote 15 years apart into one for the stage. It walks an elegantly dressed Adam and Eve through their time in Eden before and after the fall, as a pair of counter-punching lovebird pundits. Birney, who has a genuine star presence, plays Adam and directs.

CHESTER-- David Birney's adaptation of Mark Twain's The Diaries of Adam and Eve has a range all too rare in the arts today, shaking up the foundations of our being while making us laugh at our own human foolishness.

Both Birney and Twain started with a huge advantage, of course--the Judeo-Christian explanation for the human predicament--but Twain brought to it his crackling satirical slant, and Birney combined the "diaries" into the story of a man and a woman confronting the mystery, pain and joy of living in this incomprehensible universe.

As Adam, Birney portrays a man like most men, incapable of understanding the woman who is, paradoxically, the creature most able to fulfill his needs.

She is the brighter of the two, challenging him, popping his self-importance, and exasperating him with her curiosity and intelligence This afforded Twain (and Birney) the opportunity to give new zing to the time-honored jokes about the eternal incompatibility of men and women, which are subtly enhanced as the aging Adam speaks more and more with a sharp Missouri twang.