Playwright: Charles Busch. At: Project 891 Theatre Company at Edgewater Presbyterian Church, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. Phone: 773-853-3210; $20. Runs through: Dec. 4
“In the theater, no one is what they seem,” warns a doyenne of the stage. This is especially true when your playwright is Charles Busch, whose aesthetic mandates the elderly dowager being portrayed by a male actor in drag and the Chinese maidservant, by an African-American actress in white-face. The other company members whom we are told will perform for the President and his entourage at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, are likewise broad stock-types—suave leading man, pompous leading lady, alcoholic soubrette, fey call-boy, et al. With the fatal gunshot, however, all backstage hijinks and green-room intrigues cease as the actors confront the end of their careers.
This an abrupt change of mood to accomplish with nothing but an intermission in which to catch our breath and recall that these hitherto caricatured personalities correspond to actual historical figures—in particular, Miss Laura Keene, whose legacy was not to be her appearance in the main role of Tom Taylor’s popular comedy, Our American Cousin, but her comfort of the wounded Abraham Lincoln before the ambulances arrived. The events that Busch recounts may be speculation (at the very least), but they are framed in documented fact. There’s a juxtaposition that leaves us first chortling at the Confederate-sympathizing ingenue’s effete husband frantically concealing his peccadillo with a comely young understudy, then swiftly applauding Keene’s courageous defense of her colleagues against the calumny arising from the coincidence of the assassin having been—that’s right—an actor!
Under Michael Rashid’s nimble direction for the Project 891 Theatre Company, an ensemble led by the stately Mary Anne Bowman in full diva mode as Laura Keene, valiantly supported by Michelle X. Taylor as the wry-humored Madame Wu-Chan and “D.W. Taylor”—no relation—as the dotty Mrs. Maude Bentley, retain their dignity with never a giggle or wink, even when engaging in cat-spats and chases (rendered even more uproarious by the combatants’ voluminous hoopskirts). Busch’s affection for his topic sometimes slows the production’s momentum, but its pace should quicken as the players settle into their roles. In the meantime, it’s worth arriving at the theater early just to hear the pre-show music. Yes, that’s Hugh Laurie playing boogie-woogie piano on “Swanee River.”