R-Rated Twain Hits the Bleepin' Road

The Mark Twain House & Museum turns up the heat on summer with R-Rated Twain on Aug. 5 and 6 at Hole in the Wall Theater in New Britain.

Featuring some of Mark Twain's spiciest, salacious and shocking works that span topics not fit to print (or even say in public). Included in the naughty hilarity will be a new short comedy Mark Twain: Ladies' Man by West Hartford playwright David Ryan Polgar.

The "adults-only" staged reading, performed by Sea Tea Improv and directed by museum Communications Manager Jacques Lamarre, the production was such a hit when presented in January that the museum is taking the show on the road to the Hole in the Wall Theater, 116 Main Street, New Britain. Be prepared to leave the kids at home, to blush and to wash your ears out with soap!

The show will take the audience through the naughtiest puns, poems, parodies, and passages that  Twain wrote. The material covered by Twain in these writings is not suitable for most publications, family audiences or polite society (and due to the nature of the material, all guests must be 17 or over or attend with a parent or guardian.)

There will also be hilariously biting take-downs of Twain's enemies culled from the recently published, bestselling "Autobiography of Mark Twain." As Twain said, "There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined," so the historic house is looking forward to letting its hair down and introducing the public to these hysterical and deliciously deviant lesser-known works.

Mark Twain: Ladies' Man resurrects "The Lincoln of our Literature" in a modern pick-up bar. Brought back from the dead in order to access his legendary library of one-liners, Twain acts as a "wing-man" for a socially inept single guy desperately seeking love. The comedy, featuring dozens of Twain's best-loved quips, will feature Michael Eck, Liza Pross and Dan Russell.

Polgar is the author of the short play Some Kind of Modern Love, which was premiered by the Connecticut Heritage Productions and has since been expanded to a full-length play that received a reading at the Buttonwood Tree in Middletown, Conn.

The blushing begins at 8 pm. For tickets, call 860-229-3049. Reservations are strongly recommended. Any available seats will be sold at the door on a first-come, first-served basis.

The show's performers are all members of Sea Tea Improv. The troupe of eleven players, trained by Hartford Stage Company and the Upright Citizens Brigade, dazzles Hartford and beyond on a regular basis with witty, raucous interpretations of audience suggestions a la Whose Line is it Anyway?  Besides their monthly packed houses at the Brew-Ha-Ha, Sea Tea Improv has performed in illustrious locations such as the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Connecticut Forum, the Funnybone, the Science Center, the Hartford Stage and Playhouse on Park.  Sea Tea was an official selection of the Providence Improv Festival and has been featured on WNPR's Colin McEnroe Show, ESPN, Better Connecticut, Mass Appeal, and Connecticut Style.