About Contact Future Projects
A Tale of Two CitiesHuckleberry FinnNorthanger AbbeyDavid CopperfieldThe Prisoner of Zenda
 
   
  The Story  Cast & Characters  
     
 

Cast & Characters

 

We managed Huckleberry Finn with a cast of 10 at Greenwich. There are 30 named parts in the script. Huck and Tom could be played by good child actors, but we were lucky enough to have two brilliant twenty year olds who could play younger.

 

 

Music

There is an original score for this version of Huckleberry Finn. It was composed by Mia Soteriou and is available on DAT or cassette from Rachel Daniels. Sheet Music for the songs is also available. 

London Management
2-4 Noel Street
London
W1V 3RB
0171 287 9000

 

Principal Characters

 

Huck Finn

0ur hero. A boy. Can't stand to be ‘sivilised’... "so I lit out. I got into my old rags, and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied". Resourceful, restless, adventurous, honest. A good friend. 

 

Jim

Miss Watson's black slave. Long-suffering, superstitious, wronged. A good companion to Huck. Practical, benign. 

 

Tom Sawyer

Another hero. Another boy. But elegant, intelligent, witty - with a great romantic imagination. The brains. 

 

Pap

"...he was most 50, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down... There warn't no colour in his face, where his face showed; it was white... white to make a body sick - a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white..." 

 

The Duke

"...Jour printer, by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theatre-actor--tragedy, you know; take a turn at mesmerism and phrenology when there's a chance; teach singing-geography school for a change, sling a lecture sometime - Oh I do lots of things - most anything that comes handy so it ain't work..." Stylish rogue and con-man. Clever, witty, unscrupulous. 

 

The King

"...seventy or upwards, and had a bald head and very grey whiskers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on and a greasy, blue woollen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot tops, and an old long- tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons..." A drunken, shifty, low-life con man.

 

Sherburn

An old-fashioned southern gentleman. Cruel, mercenary, a good shot, a relentless enemy. Illiberal, prejudiced. 

 

Colonel Grangerford

Eccentric leader of the Grangerford clan. Proud, generous, quixotic, gallant. 

 

Sophia Grangerford

Impetuous, romantic, poetry-writing daughter of the above. Beautiful and like all her clan - batty. 

 

Miss Watson

Strict, God-fearing, humourless spinster sister of Huck's guardian - Widow Douglas. Undergoes a crisis of conscience about her harsh treatment of the two runaways.

 

Widow Douglas

Meek, anxious, fearful, god-fearing guardian of Huck.

 

Peter Wilks

Killed by Sherburn for being an abolitionist. A good liberal figure. Impractical idealist. 

 

Please direct any questions to enquiries@huckleberryfinn.co.uk

 

Matthew Francis' rousing theatrical adaptation of Huckleberry Finn makes an excellent fist of what one might have thought an impossible task... a thoroughly engaging entertainment for demanding adults as well as demanding children...
Times Literary Supplement

With The Prisoner of Zenda and Northanger Abbey (by far the best of last year's Austen adaptations) Francis has proved himself an imaginative director of his own astute adaptations... Francis creates a universe of contrasts where kindness and cruelty and laughter and tragedy walk hand in hand...
Guardian

 
 
Photographs copyright Robert Workman
Click here to launch full size versions.
 

© Matthew Francis 2006