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FringeReview UK 2024


Low Down

Simple8’s Land of the Free, an ensemble-led drama moves in zig-zags from 1850-65, co-written by Sebastian Armesto and Dudley Hinton and directed by Sebastian Armesto. Playing at Southwark Borough’s Large Studio till November 9th

Absorbing and outstanding theatre.

Review

What a day to see ensemble-led Simple8’s Land of the Free, a warning shot from history: the date of the U.S. election. This ensemble-led drama moves in zig-zags from 1850-65, co-written by Sebastian Armesto and Dudley Hinton and directed by Sebastian Armesto. Playing at Southwark Borough’s Large Studio till November 9th, it circles Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865: three days after the end of the Civil War, by star actor John Wilkes Booth.

Given theatre-obsessed Lincoln fatally collides with an actor in a theatre, Simple8’s vaudevillian telling is surely the way to go. It features seven multi-roling actors and breathtaking musical interludes led by cast-member Hannah Emanuel. Indeed Dion Boucicault’s invention of Melodrama in the 1850s sets the tone, though the jump-cuts disrupt its potentially cloying nature.

We begin in 1850 with the Booth children playing Julius Caesar in their Maryland home whilst Junius Brutus their father is absent. He’s prohibited acting. They’re good. And these speeches ripple through the play: John Wilkes starts assuming Brutus’ mantle as if the language has possessed his capacity to think. Though what sparked his anti-abolitionist and Confederate sentiments remain obscure: they’re not explained and contradict his family and theatrical millieu.

Ironies abound: tyrant-sloughing Junius Brutus was an ancestor of the Caesar-slaying Brutus we know. John Wilkes progressively assumes the mantle. Not so much method as mania. His father Junius might furnish one clue: Junius Sr nearly suffocated his Desdemona; only his eminence saved him, given every drunken affray he began on stage.

So though there’s scenes with Lincoln, it’s the colourful Booth family whose fortunes snake across 15 years. Cast-members Owen Oakeshott’s and Dan Wolff’s turns at a stage-left upright are bewitching. Oakeshott (who also toots on a flute) riffs Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer” and mid-century parlour songs, even anthems through jazzy glissandi as if he were Earl Wild.  Someone – possibly Emanuel  – plays a violin off-stage. There’s part-singing, with the cast exhibiting fine voices.

Kate Bunce’s prosc-arch with curtains feature a column décor either side adorned with photographs of assassination attempts (John Hinkley, the Roosevelt attempt, Garfield’s killing and, hanging like a question-mark, Trump gazing out like his own insurrection). Continually-changed theatre-signs tell us in Brecht 1860-style when we are.

In a far cry from the sad figure cut in Sondheim’s 1991 Assassins (memorably revived at Chichester in 2023) and the great torch-ballad refrain “Why did you do it Johnny?”, Johnny’s family emerges as the acting colossus of America: John Wilkes by no means the least of them. British and bigamist father Junius absconded to the States with his partner Mary a former flower-girl. Leaving behind wife, child, and (again) Boucicault’s 1841 debut hit London Assurance he became the greatest mid-century U.S-based actor. His son Edwin became the greatest U.S, tragedian of his time; eldest Junius Jr. was the weakest link who married a famous actress. He didn’t turn bitter assassin.

Youngest John Wilkes (they’re all hubristically named after famed freedom-fighters) wasn’t just the “handsomest man in America” and the original matinee idol: he had fire and a spontaneity frequently labelled ”genius”; his Romeo was famed. His one failure was impatience in honing his art, unlike more solid Edwin.

Brandon Bassir looks the part: his John Wilkes Booth broods, leaps (a Booth speciality), orates and springs attentions on women like a flushed panther. Bassir’s Wilkes is a chameleon on the surface: he telegraphs theatrical joy, sexual gallantry but continually broods a bass-note.

Three of the cast perform male and female roles. Hannah Emanuel takes Keene the actress, serene Mary Lincoln, and purrs menace with officious Mudd and Jack.

Natalie Law’s is persuasive as Booth’s last-minute fiancée Lucy Hale, assertive senator’s daughter, as well as Rathbone the officer present at the assassination and Wilkes’ young cousin Herold. Law’s Lucy is appealing and acute enough to make you wonder why Wilkes threw this gem of a human being away. Full of organising brio, Lucy as a nurse saw more than he of soldiers suffering, and probes Wilkes.

By contrast Sara Lessore’s put-upon daughter Asia and brief flirtation interest Isabel, as well as Lincoln’s Black staffer Mrs Keckley, are different iterations of oppressed, traditional roles.

Owen Oakeshott’s Junius is possessed of a voice as stentorian as Brian Blessed when required, though more modulated and burnished. He explodes on the scene having jumped out of a role (scarlet-clad Cardinal Richelieu) straight into a carriage in a panic-attack. Making his children tremble with fear he hesitates a confession he can’t face telling, but lets them read in a newspaper.

Oakeshott’s voice is deployed more quietly as actor-manager Ford, and as Ashmun, Lincoln’s campaign manager he’s perpetually lectured by Lincoln on popular votes versus seats (mischievously topical but authentic) as well as Garratt who led the manhunt.

It’s here that Clara Onyemere’s main role as Lincoln orating speeches emerges as Wilkes’ light twin: it’s never a parody but as Julius Caesar sashays through Wilkes’ mind, you see Lincoln taken up with mirror oratory. It’s a neat dovetailing of character. Onyemere’s also conspirator Azerodt, and Will a put-upon junior actor.

Perhaps Wilkes’ sharpest rebuke bar Lucy is Dan Wolff’s Edwin, the great classical actor (later famed for Hamlet). An abolitionist and more secure in his vocation, he’s a living rebuke. Wolff’s also easily-scared Hawk, actor of British farce Our American Cousin on the fatal evening: when Wilkes, who knows the play, knows exactly the point to cause disruption. Wolff’s queasy conspirator Surratt and slightly crazed Sergeant Boston who fired on Wilkes complete a traversal to less sanguine characters.

By skilfully placing Wilkes in an oblique agon to both siblings and Lincoln himself. Smple8 pose a fearful symmetry: what kind of narcissism or self-obsession produces monsters? Perhaps the sleep of reason but possibly the awakening of father’s sins. Most, Wilkes’ actions changed the way America did politics, injected a bacillus of violence and assassinations that arguably damage the American psyche. Absorbing and outstanding theatre.

 

Written by Sebastian Armesto and Dudley Hinton and Directed by Sebastian Armesto, Set and Costume Designer Kate Bunce, Lighting Designer Chuma Emembolu, Musical Supervisor Hannah Emanuel,  Costume Supervisor Amy Trigg,

Production Manager Chris Buffham, Dialect Coach Caitlin Stegemoller, Stage Manager Elizabeth Patrick, Producer Dudley Hinton for Simple8, Production LX William Gibbs,

Production Photography KatieC Photography, Marketing Anne Dillow for Mobius Industries, Press and PR Elaine Jones and Annabelle Mastin-Lee for Mobius Industries, Scenery S.A.S. Works, Costumes Sands Films

Published