Reviewed by Jerry Kraft
I
came to this production quite late in the run, so my critical response is
really limited to joining in on the chorus of approval already offered by other
reviewers. Still, I've always felt that the best reviews are really just a kind
of reporting on one person's experience in the theatre at any given
performance. On those terms my response to a Saturday matinee two weeks
after opening is really no different than it would have been on opening night.
Sheila
Daniels'
production of “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” impressed and enthralled me, leaving me
surprisingly moved and deeply gratified by the integrity and expertise of the
performances. Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize winning script is rarely produced; I
suspect partly because it is a large cast and requires a substantial budget,
but perhaps more because it requires a lead actor with qualities not easily
found, and a director capable of unloading from the character the myth and
deification that attend most histories of this most intriguing, probably
greatest President.
Erik
Lochtefeld
begins his portrayal of Lincoln as a lanky, crude, least-likely-to-succeed
young man saddled with debt and trying to work his way through a crude
education. The play takes us from that direction-less adolescent whose highest
ambition is to become postmaster in charge of one or two letters a month to the
grief-tempered, politically astute man elected, almost against his will and
certainly against his best instincts, to the highest office in the land. In
order for that journey to be believable, we must also believe each and every
one of the relationships in the play, each of the people whose experience adds
another layer to the man's character. Lochtefeld never has a false move.
In
his profound love for Ann Rutledge (the lovely and convincing Angela DiMarco), or his complex marriage to
Mary Todd (a deeply impressive Mary Jane Gibson), whether in his relationships
with locals or political outsiders, family or friends, commoner or
power-broker, Lochtefeld grew in each encounter. That growth becomes stature,
that character becomes greatness. It is a quality quite separate from ambition,
and one very difficult to act. In his relationship with his best friend, Joshua
Speed, we see two men leading parallel lives, and while both are equally
admirable only one will come to greatness. Hans Alwies is excellent as Speed, but we
cannot help but compare these two men, moving through life side by side, up to
the point where one of them must answer to a higher calling. It does not
diminish Joshua Speed; it only provides another measure for Lincoln.
Sheila
Daniels brings that same quality of character to this entire production. There
is nothing false or manipulative about the play. We believe that, as in all the
best historical fiction, if this is not the way it actually was then it is
certainly the way it might have been. The physical production is beautiful,
with an authentic, entertaining musical underscore by Gretta Harley, simple but elegant scenic
design by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams and beautiful costumes by Melanie Taylor Burgess. The three-hour playing time
feels exactly right, three one-hour acts that feel perfectly integrated and
necessary.
By
the conclusion of the play, following a Lincoln-Douglas debate in which the
estimable R. Hamilton Wright creates a Douglas of strength and honorable difference,
Lincoln makes one final address to the people of his community before leaving
for Washington. By that time we have seen the man in all his uncertainty and
sorrow, a man who understands the terrible cost of trying to take what a person
believes is the only right course, one who measures his compromise against his
intention and has the courage to take the next step forward, trusting only that
his conscience will guide him.
Perhaps
the best thing I can say about this entire production is that after his final
speech, in the silence, standing on the podium, back turned to the audience,
the man Lincoln somehow grew in front of our eyes. Nothing he could have said
at that point could have been as eloquent or convincing as the simple, earned fact
of the man at the center of the stage. That is the only real measure of
greatness for any leader or any actor.