Ford's Theatre Tells Lincoln's Story Without the Caricature

The veteran actor starring as Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre's "The Heavens Are Hung in Black," a world premiere by playwright James Still, had never performed in the space before, but he had been here many times. A bit of a Lincoln buff by his own description, David Selby says that whenever his previous film or theater work brought him to Washington, he would always visit to Ford's. Not to see a show, mind you, but just to "stand and walk around inside" the temple-like building. American history, he says, "reverberates" there.

That echo makes it something of a challenge, Selby admits, to play a man who once sat a few feet away, watching the very stage on which the actor now stands. "It's not that you feel a burden," he begins, before stopping himself. "Well, maybe you do."

If so, it's a burden he shares with the playwright. According to Still, the last thing he wanted to do was write a play that "felt like a visit to the Lincoln Memorial."

Such works of "heritage theater" have been done, Still says, many times. His challenge? To bring to "vivid life" onstage a man whose ghost still haunts that very stage. "From any seat in the house," he says, "you glance up and see that box." So how do you exorcise that ghost? If Still's play is any indication, the answer is by inviting in more ghosts.

Set in 1862, "Heavens" is bookended by two major events in Lincoln's life: the death of the president's 11-year-old son, Willie, and the release of the Emancipation Proclamation. Although it takes place largely in Lincoln's office, the production travels to several other places, Still says, mainly through dream sequences in which Lincoln meets the ghosts of slave Dred Scott, abolitionist John Brown and former politi cal rival Stephen Douglas.

One thing the 17-actor play is not, Still says, is an impersonation of Lincoln. A caricature along the lines of James Whitmore's Harry S. Truman in "Give 'Em Hell, Harry" or Will Rogers in "Will Rogers' U.S.A" (both of which, incidentally, have played at Ford's and helped solidify its previous reputation for safe, tourist-friendly fare).

"That would be what we probably would expect," Still says, adding that the recent presidential election has led not just to a unprecedented political climate, but to an aesthetic climate that "demands surprise." If his play works, Still expects that audiences will make the natural connection in their minds between the "agonizing decisions" Lincoln is shown making onstage and the fact that an African American has just moved into the White House.

Lincoln's story -- and, by implication, its direct link to President Obama's -- is just one of the quintessentially American stories that Ford's Director Paul Tetreault believes is the theater's mission to tell as it enters this next phase of its history. Next up on the Ford's Theatre calendar? "The Civil War" (March 27-May 24), a Tony-nominated musical inspired by the words of such 19th-century figures as poet Walt Whitman and Lincoln.

Just don't expect Ford's to sing the same note, over and over, as some critics have complained in the past. You won't be seeing revivals of such musicals as "Godspell" anymore. Nor will you be seeing edgier fare along the lines of Bertolt Brecht. Its new mission, Tetreault says, is to "present the American experience" in all its manifestations. "Those stories we want to tell may be African American, Asian American or Latino American. They may be old plays or new ones, set in contemporary or historical times. But they're all American stories."

The Heavens Are Hung in Black Ford's Theatre, 511 10th St. NW. 202-347-4833 or http://www.fordstheatre.org. Through March 8. $16-$52.