John Wilkes Booth And His Crazy Actor Brother: An Error of the Moon Review

The relationship between John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin, and his brother Edwin Booth, one of the most celebrated American actors of the 19th century, seems made for the stage. It is no surprise that there have been several plays about them (and even a movie starring Richard Burton) before “An Error of the Moon,” which has now opened on Theater Row. It would be surprising if any were as bad.

Playwright Luigi Creatore creates an Edwin literally insane with jealousy, – “I am Othello; I am my own Iago,” the character says near the end – accusing his wife of sleeping with his brother, although he has no evidence of this whatsoever. It is this madness that in “An Error” prevents Edwin from stopping his brother from killing the president.

Now, there are clues in the historical record that all the Booths were touched with mental illness, starting with their father, Junius Brutus Booth, who was among the foremost American Shakespearean actors of his time. Junius was evidently also a bigamist and an alcoholic, and given to such peculiar behavior – he would suddenly crow like a rooster on stage, or be found along the side of a road clad only in his underwear reciting poetry – that his (second) wife sent her children on tour with him from an early age to keep his eccentric outbursts in check. This was how both Edwin and his older brother Junius Jr. became actors, by accompanying their father on the road.

There is but a bare hint of this background in “An Error of the Moon” (although the title is a line from “Othello”: The error of the moon is that “she comes more nearer earth than she was wont/And makes men mad.”) Also absent is the story of the three Booth brothers – Junius, Edwin and John Wilkes – appearing together in a benefit production at New York City’s Winter Garden Theater of “Julius Caesar” in order to raise funds for a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park. The next day, Edwin played “Hamlet” to reviews that pegged his performance as the “absolute realization” of the role – and John Wilkes went back to his plot to kidnap Lincoln, convinced that the president planned to make himself king. The following year, it was a line from “Julius Caesar” – “Sic semper tyrannis” (Thus always to tyrants) – that he is said to have shouted from the stage of the Ford Theater after shooting Abraham Lincoln.

With so much odd and riveting about the actual story of the Booths, why jazz it up with something as unlikely –and uninteresting – as an Othello twist? “Error” is subtitled “A Speculation.” What is most unfortunate about its pointless fabrications is that there are at least three aspects of this production that spur one to speculate how good it could have been.

First, there are some intriguing scenes between the two brothers, as they rehearse Shakespeare together, fence, argue, show camaraderie salted with rivalry. Second, there are some tantalizing true tidbits from the historical record that show the playwright did his research: Edwin actually did save the life of Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert, for example, hoisting him up when the young man fell into the gap of the railroad tracks just as the train was moving. Third, there is the performance of Andre Veenstra, making his Off-Broadway debut as John Wilkes — younger, more charismatic than his brother, a womanizer, a child, a racist, a hothead but no more of a madman than the rest of the family – less of one than Edwin. Veenstra plays the role energetically without the staginess of the actor playing his brother.

Would this play have worked better if the author’s imagination had focused not on Edwin and his jealousy but on John Wilkes and his….mission? Would it have been provocative to have an appealing actor like Veenstra at the center of a drama presented from the assassin’s point of view? (Yes, I know, Stephen Sondheim has been there.)

Eliminating the central premise of “An Error of the Moon” would not alone have saved this production, since it is only one of Error’s several errors, both big and small (the latter including deployment of fuzzy and distracting video projections.) To pick the most obvious: You would hope that a play about actors would require exemplary acting, yet I could only apply that description to two of the four cast members, Veenstra and Margaret Copeland in the largely thankless role of Edwin’s tortured wife Mary, who has to put up with Edwin’s jealousy and mistrust even after she’s dead.
That is not, mercifully, something theatergoers have to do.

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An Error of the Moon
Beckett Theater at Theater Row (410 West 42nd Street.)
By Luigi Creatore
Directed by Kim Wield
Scenic design by Steven Capone, costume design by Alixandra Englund, lighting design by Charles Foster, sound design by Christian Frederickson, projection design by C.Andrew Bauer, fight direction by Rick Sordelet.
Cast:
Margaret Copeland – Mary Devlin Booth
Erik Heger – Edwin Booth
Andrew Veenstra – John Wilkes Booth
Brian Wallace – The Player
Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission
Ticket prices: $50. Student rush: $20
Through October 10, 2010