Trudie Lee
Abe Lincoln ponders the future. Hopefully he doesn’t get ahead of himself.
Convoluted play garners giggles but fails to make its point
Moments before the curtain rises on Alberta Theatre Projects’ Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre the audience is politely informed that walkways and catwalks will be used during the performance and asked to keep them clear. The play actually made pretty sparse use of these devices. The audience would have benefited more from an additional warning: “This play is often so utterly baffling and Byzantine it may leave you wondering whether it’s possible to offer any analysis other than ‘What the hell was that?’’”
In ATP’s defence a cast list in which the three roles are “An actor dressed like Laurel” “An actor dressed like Hardy” and “An actor dressed like the wax figure of Abraham Lincoln” should probably serve as warning enough that the play in question is a tad unconventional. To take just one of three equally convoluted examples of confusing roles actor Chris Bullough plays an actor named John who plays an actor named Leonard who for some reason is playing Stan Laurel who in turn is playing John Wilkes Booth who is preparing to assassinate not the real Abraham Lincoln but rather — and apparently the distinction is critical — a wax figure thereof.
As this maze of mirrors would suggest providing a synopsis of the plot to the limited extent there is one is virtually impossible. But it’s also difficult to dismiss it as a total waste of time. Assuming the play wasn’t conceived during a long acid trip playwright Larry Tremblay obviously put a lot of thought into crafting it. But to what end remains a mystery.
The play doesn’t exactly lend itself to great performances. The cast which also includes Geoffrey Pounsett and Allan Morgan — in roles too numerous to mention — are competent but the actors differentiate little between the characters they each play. The names change but the personalities remain the same. It’s hard to fault them too much though since without this measure of consistency things would be even harder to follow.
Was it just for laughs? The play is certainly amusing at times albeit for varying reasons. The audience engaged in some juvenile giggling when take-your-pick-of-names says to his non-wax co-star: “If I hadn’t been here you’d be advertising laxatives. Mr. Asshole that’s what they’d call you.” The crowd also chortled (most likely because there wasn’t any other reasonable response) at the sight of Lincoln’s wax figure apparently “dancing the death of America” to Asian rhythms seconds after being shot at the titular theatre.
However scenes such as this accompanied by some rather pretentious ruminations about slavery and celebrity and lines such as “Why does every national tragedy turn into a miserable story about balls?” suggest that Tremblay also wants audiences to think. It’s hard to believe he would go to all this trouble to convey something as obvious as “slavery is bad” but if his message is more complex it was just as pointless an effort. There are some interesting observations for instance about John Wilkes Booth’s motives but they don’t acquire greater force by virtue of being in the play. If plucked from the script and read in isolation they’d pretty much have the same impact.
At one point Lincoln says “I wish the same luck on any playwright” speaking of Tom Taylor (still known today only because he wrote the play the president attended that fateful night). Tremblay should indeed be so lucky. Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre’s sheer bizarreness may attract some buzz but unlike Taylor’s Our American Cousin any degree of fame is unlikely to last much beyond this run.
