As we know, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in a theatre in 1865. His killer, John Wilkes Booth was a well known actor. That was perhaps how he was able to get into the private presidential box. The ushers at Fords Theatre in Washington knew Booth. They didn’t know, of course, what he was going to do.
Lincoln died soon after – and Booth who escaped by leaping down onto the stage (breaking his leg in the fall) was shot by soldiers in the barn where he was hiding out. Lincoln never regained consciousness but Booth took several hours to die.
John Wilkes Booth came from a family of Shakespearian actors, famous in those days in America. His older brother Edwin retired from the stage after the assassination – but eventually returned to it – and now he returns once again, in a musical about the lives of the Booths to be told in Cambridge on its way to the Edinburgh Festival.
The show, Barnum Booth Lincoln, has been written by Kaely Michels Gualtieri, now a masters student at Darwin College, who previously spent a decade as celebrated trapeze artist working with Cirque du Soleil and the Barnum and Bailey Circus.
She says she was inspired to write the show once she found out that the Booths had also worked with P T (Phineas Taylor) Barnum. “Here was someone who performed to thousands of people every night. Why did he shoot a president? Also I am the oldest of three siblings. I was intrigued by the effect on Edwin of what his younger brother did.”
Kaely, whose first degree was in biochemistry at Brown University in Rhode Island, (she took a break from flying through the air) notes that Lincoln knew the Booth family and admired their work.
“Lincoln had seen the older brother on stage and invited him to play in Washington. I believe on the night of the shooting, Edwin was playing Macbeth in Boston. Edwin had played Hamlet and cut some of the lines.
“Lincoln wrote to him asking why these lines had been cut because he said they were some of the best lines in the play.”
The lines were Claudius’s prayer where he wants to ask God for forgiveness but can’t. “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to Heaven go.”
Kaely says: “This musical is partly about redemption.”
The story is narrated by Edwin Booth in a circus setting with Barnum as the ringmaster. This is a student production with six Cambridge students in the cast and a band including keyboard, violin, bass, guitar, accordion and saxophone.
Three of the actors also play instruments. The music has been written by law student Chi Wai Hu, who has worked on several Cambridge University musical productions.
Barnum Booth Lincoln is at The Corpus Playroom in St Edward’s Passage Cambridge (next to Cambridge Arts Theatre) from Wednesday May 13 to Saturday, May 16. It will be at The Roundel Theatre in Edinburgh from August 7.
Suitable for people aged 16 and over. Tickets for the Corpus Playroom show available here:
https://www.adctheatre.com/whats-on/musical/barnum-booth-lincoln/
