In ‘‘Mad Breed,” Jacqueline E. Lawton’s historically-based daydream now premiering at Joe’s Movement Emporium in Mount Rainier by the Active Cultures theater company, a teenage John Wilkes Booth determinedly utters prophetic words about one day becoming the most famous member of his then-famed for acting family.
While Lawton might have concentrated exclusively on the emergence of young Booth’s dangerous passions that would eventually lead him to assassinate Abraham Lincoln 15 years later, she instead offers a comic and curious glimpse into the eccentric, language-loving world of the Booths, as well as a winsome romance involving the future killer’s charismatic elder brother, Edwin, and Adah, a courageous young African-American free woman.
We first meet Wilkes (as he prefers to be called) on his 13th birthday. The irksome pipsqueak (played sympathetically by actor Zachary Fernebok) is addressing a secret society of reactionary men gathered at an undisclosed location not far from the Booth family farm in Bel Air, Md., where they vent about hot topics of the day like Irish immigration. Though not yet too scary, Wilkes is already a fanatic in the making.
Conversely, our initial encounter with handsome Edwin (Danny Gavigan) – five years Wilkes’ senior and infinitely more open-minded – reveals a kinder gentler fellow.
After literally bumping into ‘‘Francois,” a genial young stranger who’s missed the last train to New York City, Edwin invites him to crash at the Booth place.
The pair feel a baffling (to Edwin) frisson of attraction, later made clear when ‘‘Francois” admits to actually being Adah (Anastasia Wilson), a young African-American actress and playwright whose farcical – by necessity – circumstances include passing as a white boy in black face in order to be part of an all-white itinerant minstrel show (conventional propriety disapproved of whites sharing the stage with blacks, and were equally not keen on a lone black woman traveling with a band of white men).
Back at the farm, Wilkes’ warmhearted sister Asia (Amanda Thickpenny) and the respectively playful and prissy neighbors Sleepy (Lee Liebeskind) and Blanche (Kristen Egermeier) make preparations for the long overdue wedding of Booth dynasty patriarch – the British-born Shakespearean actor, abolitionist and vegetarian Junius Brutus Booth – to his longtime mistress and the mother of his brood, Mary Ann Holmes.
Proposed festivities include the Booth offspring and friends performing scenes from ‘‘Much Ado about Nothing.” With Adah’s arrival, a ‘‘Romeo & Juliet”-inspired minstrel show is considered, but wisely replaced with a heartfelt melody celebrating the possibility of love.
In short order, Edwin and Adah fall in love. Employed as his alcoholic father’s dresser and companion, and undecided whether to act or perhaps to become a farmer or cabinet maker, the future heartthrob and stateside Hamlet of his generation is stirred by the daring lengths Adah is willing to go simply for the chance to perform before an audience. This brave young woman fires Edwin’s ambition to follow in his father’s profession.
Director Juanita Rockwell draws good performances from an appealing young cast, but more impressively, she seamlessly stages an episodic play that in lesser hands might suffer from awkward, hard-to-follow transitions and elegantly showcases the piece’s intrinsic theatricality.
Marie-Audrey Desy’s simple, multi-leveled set decorated with bales of hay and humble footlights, and backed by a wall of roughly-hewn planks effectively salutes the most basic of theatrical venues, while also ominously suggesting that other barn where an older Wilkes will be killed by Union cavalry.
Specially commissioned by Active Cultures, ‘‘Mad Breed” is a veritable education-sprinkled play with fascinating details from Maryland’s antebellum history and racial past.
Though in part based on an African-American actress of the era, Lawton’s Adah is an invention, as is the interracial romance that is heart of her play; however the Booth characters – whom all depict historical persons – provide a memorable introduction to those family members whose lights have dimmed while Wilkes’ glares on.
IF YOU GO
Mad Breed
When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Saturdays and 5 p.m. Sundays through June 1
Where: Joe’s Movement Emporium, 3309 Bunker Hill Road, Mount Rainier
Tickets: $12
Box office: 800-494-8497
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