The return of Booth to Baltimore

If you want me to get to see a play, you call it John Wilkes Booth: One Night Only! Currently playing at Baltimore's Center Stage, written by Man Men's Matthew Weiner and starring Ben Ahlers (known to me as the footman who got a patent for a clock [watch?] on The Gilded Age), the play is almost 2 hours of getting the story of John Wilkes Booth from John Wilkes Booth. As the title suggests, it's played as a play, with a prompter and a young actor to play Booth as a boy. But Booth's sister Asia and brother Edwin also pop up to take part in the proceedings.

I was impressed! I continue to volunteer at Ford's Theatre and have read more than my fair share of Booth biographies, so there wasn't really anything in the play I didn't know (except, perhaps, about Booth having Jewish ancestors; I can't rule out that I haven't read that, but I certainly didn't retain it). The depiction of Booth is pretty much exactly as I imagine him--charming, conceited, threatening, volatile.

Ben Ahlers as John Wilkes Booth. Courtesy Center Stage.

The play very much focuses on Booth's upbringing and his family; the interactions with Asia and Edwin are really well done, particularly when Wilkes starts to discuss a family scandal. The tension between Edwin and Wilkes is palpable, though I feel like they could've gone into it even more (which is what I get for having read multiple books about their relationship). I wish Weiner had spent a bit more time in the lead-up to the assassination, though I understand not wanting to explore that as much since there is so much written about it.

I'm not 100% sold on the use of the "It's a performance!" framing device, which was used a bit heavy-handedly, particularly in the beginning of the play. I also question the casting of Black women in the two female roles--and it's only they that use the n-word in the show. I can see arguments both for and against this, but this was one situation where I can't totally get behind color-blind casting. Booth's racism is just so important to what happened that seeing him with a Black sister kept me a bit out of the show. Again, I could probably be brought around on this.

Ultimately, though, I very much enjoyed this. There was a moment late in the play where the relevance to our own tumultuous period was so clear that the audience was literally murmuring. Powerful show, great acting, and, I think, enjoyable even for those not intimately familiar with the history of John Wilkes Booth.