Jim the runaway slave accurately foresees "considerable trouble and considerable joy" when he reads Huck Finn's palm early in "Big River."

Had Jim performed the same service for the audience at the first preview performance of the big musical on May 27 at Mill Mountain Theatre, he could have left out the trouble and predicted only joy, for this top-notch production is a pleasure to witness.

Much of the joy is provided by Andy Sandberg and Marty Lamar, who play Huck and Jim, respectively. Their acting is perfectly adequate, but when they launch into one of "Big River's" many poignant country-and-gospel-inflected tunes, it's clear that these guys were put on Earth to sing. And when their voices blend, as in "River In the Rain" and "Worlds Apart," the effect is doubly enjoyable.

"Big River," a multiple Tony winner in 1985, is based on Mark Twain's quintessential American novel, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The river is the Mississippi, which Jim and Huck brave in a wobbly raft. Jim hopes the river will carry him to freedom, while Huck rides its currents in search of adventure. He finds adventure aplenty, learning in the process that honesty has value and that you don't have to be white to be human, even in pre-Civil War America.

The play seems true to the timeless novel, capturing the laconic humor for which Twain is justly remembered but also his somber points on the themes of family and race. Potential patrons of the play should know that the n-word is frequently spoken.

Prominent characters from the book are well represented on stage, among them Huck's pal Tom Sawyer (Patrick Scott Minor); Huck's reprobate father, Pap (Damian Buzzerio); and two of literature's more memorable con men, the King (Matthew William Chizever) and the Duke (Turner Crumbley).

Pap's drunken indictment of the "Guv'ment" is a highlight of the first act, as is "Hand for the Hog," Tom's enthusiastic endorsement of swinehood. Though the spotlight rarely strays from the male characters in "Big River," the distaff characters are ably represented. Frances Bordlee, Sarah Dandridge and Jessica Blair shine as the comely Wilkes sisters in "You Oughta Be Here With Me," and Bordlee harmonizes memorably with Sandberg and Lamar on "Leavin's Not the Only Way To Go."

"Big River" features lavish sets by Jimmy Ray Ward, costumes by Michiko K. Skinner, lively choreography by Ginger Poole and a small but effective pit orchestra led by Chris Tilley. The music and lyrics are by the late Roger Miller and remind us poignantly of his premature loss to cancer in 1992, when he was only 56.

Directed by Patrick Benton, "Big River" sends notice that Mill Mountain Theatre can still mount the ambitious musicals that for years were its bread and butter.