In the beginning Adam and Eve and The Eden Diaries by Bill Rodriguez
	The Eden Diaries Adapted by Pat Hegnauer from stories by Mark Twain. Directed by Pat Hegnauer. With Luis Astudillo and Sandra Laub. At the Redwood Library in Newport on September 18 and the Kingston Free Library on September 20.

I suppose Mark Twain was the most clever one behind The Eden Diaries, but he sure has to share credit. Pat Hegnauer has written a very funny adaptation of his two short stories, ostensibly translations of Adam and Eve’s diaries that turns their soliloquies into a droll exchange. And Luis Astudillo and Sandra Laub, the actors who portray our two progenitors, are quite inventive in bringing them to life.

The production began last weekend at a fundraiser for the Hamilton House, then moved to libraries around the state; it concludes this week. In recent years, Hegnauer has been doing ad hoc productions of one-act plays she has written. The co-founder of 2nd Story Theatre has always been drawn to intimate two- or three-person plays, where she can concentrate the interpersonal intensity till the stage sizzles. The Eden Diaries is far more easygoing than that, but even amusing moments can build to strong effect in such sure hands.

Less than an hour long, it’s presented as readings from the diaries. In the opening performance, the Jerry Miller Quartet, replete in Hawaiian shirts, swung into apt mood music now and then. (Recordings aree used at the other performances.) Eve’s gaily Magic Markered journal warns "Keep Out! Eve’s Diary," like one a pre-adolescent would keep, which befits her wide-eyed innocence as she gazes about in wonder. She tells us she arrived just the day before.

Adam is annoyed by this "new creature" that keeps following him and is using this odd new word, "we." He says he’d prefer that she hung around the other animals. She begins naming the animals, adamant that her intuitions are correct about her sounds such as "dodo" fitting the things. (But no way, he insists, is she changing the name of the garden to Niagara Falls Park.) As far as the most significant animal there, the skinny reptile with no hips that drapes itself in trees, she’ll hear from him later.

The Mars/Venus traits that Clemens describes are readily recognizable a century later. Eve’s chattering drives Adam to distraction, and he remarks that if it could only stay quiet a few minutes he might find the creature attractive. She notes that he talks very little, and she considers that "perhaps it’s because he’s not very bright." When he makes her unhappy by telling her to go away, he observes that water drips out of the things she looks with, which she wipes away with the back of her paws.

Clemens takes full advantage of having two characters amazed at seeing things for the first time. My favorite moment is when Adam scratches his head over this noisy little thing she is calling Cain. It can’t be a creature like them, because it can’t walk. He thinks it’s a fish and plunks it into the water to find out.

This is all very amusing, but how Laub and Astudillo bring the pair to life is what makes this such good theater. We get Adam’s befuddlement and exasperation and Eve’s flower-child sweetness for a start. The actors probably have the most fun, along with us, when Adam drops his snarky pose, like a junior high school boy discovering girls, and the two conduct a long wordless flirtation. Now, it wouldn’t do to be coy about sex when Sam Clemens was so forthright in his time. (The stories were promptly banned upon joint publication in an illustrated book because Eve was depicted naked and un-figleafed.) So Hegnauer has them stroll off, starry-eyed and beaming, behind a half-screen, where we can see the lower third of them and be reminded that this happy activity is nothing to be ashamed about.

This is where Clemens comes through, too. He finesses his critique of Christian fuddydudditry simply by having them make an unapologetic life for themselves outside the garden. When Adam sees the animals devouring their neighbors, he knows that Eve must have eaten the apple. (Laub doesn’t do so furtively, but with gusto.) He declares that he would rather be outside Eden with Eve rather than inside without her.

Clemens’s wife died in 1904, and you’d hope that this romantic portrait of Eve as loving helpmate, written two years later, would have given him solace. But 1906 was also the year that he wrote the pessimistic What Is Man?, and he died disheartened in 1910, cynicism about human behavior having tipped a balance within him.

At the end, when Adam and Eve are starting their new life raising Cain and Abel, the band plays "Come Rain or Come Shine." These two are on their own, as are we all. But since we are blessed with the likes of Mark Twain and this talented company, we are reminded that we have all we need to make the best of it.