BIG RIVER: THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire. Director Marc Robin’s rendition of Roger Miller and William Hauptman’s 1985 Broadway hit (the show’s second local production this season is a winning revival with a rich emotional texture one doesn’t usually associate with dinner theater. Robin and his cast capture both the exuberant humor and the dark side of Mark Twain’s classic: the horror of slavery, the pain of poverty, the human capacity for cruelty, and the anger and hurt that sometimes color the characters’ friendships. Robin’s in-the-round staging skillfully sketches the shifting relationships among the raffish Huck Finn; Jim, the runaway slave Huck helps escape; the King and the Duke, two con men who join Huck and Jim as they raft down the Mississippi; Mary Jane, the pretty heiress whom Huck saves from the crooks’ scam; and Huck’s irrepressible, foolhardy chum Tom Sawyer, who nearly gets Huck, Jim, and himself killed in his elaborate attempt to free Jim from bondage.
