Glimpsing Margins of Mrs. Lincoln’s Life

An enormous, tattered American flag covers the stage at El Portal Center for the Arts, unspooling from the rear and draped like a rug all the way to the front. A few holes in the fabric suggest that bullets passed through it.

The flag supports Art Manke’s staging of James Prideaux’s “The Last of Mrs. Lincoln,” but it inadvertently evokes last week’s trauma in New York and Washington. That the imagery is serendipitous makes it no less powerful.

The distressed banner in fact refers to an earlier American trauma, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The play is about that crime’s aftermath in the life of the former first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln.

It was indeed a tale of woe. Unwilling to return to Springfield, Ill., because of the locals’ disapproval of her burial arrangements for her husband, the widow retreated to rented rooms in Chicago. Accused of Confederate sympathies, she received no pension. She was humiliated when a plan to sell her gowns was revealed and when friends and associates wrote books of questionable veracity about her and Mr. Lincoln.

She spent two periods of self-imposed exile in Europe, interrupted by a return to America during which her youngest son, Tad, died--and her only remaining son, Robert, took her to court in order to prove her insane, after which she was institutionalized.

The premiere of Prideaux’s drama in 1972 won a Tony Award for Julie Harris. At El Portal, Marcia Rodd captures well Mrs. Lincoln’s hard-edged, sharp-tongued vivacity, as well as her first signs of losing touch with reality.

However, the play is structured so as to deny Rodd the chance to express the full tragedy of Mrs. Lincoln’s final years.

The dramatic high point of those years was surely the court hearing that pitted the first lady against her son. There were reports that Mrs. Lincoln tried to commit suicide after the court called her crazy. Yet all of this takes place during the intermission of Prideaux’s play, which skips from a scene in which Mrs. Lincoln is acting strangely to one in which she’s locked away.

Perhaps Prideaux wrote his play too soon. Robert Lincoln’s grandson released a jackpot of historical papers about the insanity trial shortly before he died in 1985, so it might be easier to incorporate this material into a drama now.

At any rate, Prideaux’s play wanders discursively from one episode to another but misses the main event. Loose ends abound--one character is seen as Mrs. Lincoln’s best friend and then disappears with only a cursory explanation.

The play avoids the pre-assassination years, thereby eliminating President Lincoln as an onstage presence, as well as the intense drama of the wartime period. It’s as if we’re glimpsing only the margins of Mary Lincoln’s life.

Manke added a few flourishes. The show opens with an “Amazing Grace” rendition that sets a meditative tone but seems a little generic. A cacophony of jumbled phrases repeats at intervals between scenes, emphasizing the strident public commentary about the life that Mary Lincoln faced. This phenomenon is reinforced by having the supporting actors who aren’t in any given scene observe from the sidelines.

Robert Lee Jacobs capably sums up the older son’s ambivalence toward his mother. Nearly all of the actors deliver crisp, clean performances, although Nathan Anderson looks and sounds too old to play 12-year-old Tad.

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“The Last of Mrs. Lincoln,” El Portal Center for the Arts, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, 7 p.m.; Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 4 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 7. $30-$45. (818) 508-4200.

Marcia Rodd: Mary Todd Lincoln

Robert Lee Jacobs: Robert Lincoln

Nathan Anderson: Tad, Lewis Baker

Jack Betts: Sen. Austin, Ninian Edwards

Mimi Cozzens: Elizabeth Edwards

Michele Mais: Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Cunningham

Melanie Ewbank: Mary Harlan

Dorothy Constantine: Mrs. McCullough

By James Prideaux. Directed by Art Manke. Set by Don Gruber. Costumes by Angela Balogh Calin. Lighting by Mark McCandless. Wigs by Joyce Litrell. Sound by Tony Edwards. Production stage manager Bryan Bradford. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.