A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

[Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER.]--It's easy to imagine Samuel Clemens and Carl Reiner as best of friends, had not the one died 10 years before the other was born. Twain would have enjoyed Reiner's work in "Your Show of Shows," "The 2000 Year Old Man," and "The Dick Van Dyke Show," just as Reiner clearly appreciates Twain's humor. The appreciation comes across in Reiner's readings of these two historical farces. Despite the good humor and the best intentions, there's something unfortunately incongruous in the juxtaposition of Twain's stories with Reiner's voice. As warmly entertaining as it is to listen to Carl Reiner, his Bronx Jewish accent and intonation don't jibe well with Twain's Mississippi and New England style, or with the medieval English settings of these two novels. S.E.S. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine


A practical, no-nonsense New Englander of 1889, knocked unconscious in a fight, wakes up in old England of 528, where, by dint of his industry, he becomes Sir Boss, a prominent and dissident member of the Round Table. With a trace of cockney in his voice, Chris Walker sprints through Mark Twain's revision of the chivalric ideal as if he were late for an appointment, tripping occasionally and never quite connecting with the authorial personality. He has no idea of what a Connecticut Yankee is or why placing one in Camelot should produce such telling thematic consequences. His main achievement is in keeping so much of the text straight at such high RPM. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine