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No matter what you think you know about Mary Todd Lincoln, Tamara Johnson Howell's heady, agile portrayal in Pygmalion Productions' "Mary and Myra" will change your mind.
"I know I'm not an easy person," she confides from her bedroom at the Bellevue Place insane asylum, where she has been committed against her will. "I have my foibles."
Howell's foible-laden Mary Lincoln is the centerpiece of a new production of playwright Catherine Filloux's twisty, intriguing story about the former first lady's complex friendship with Mary Bradwell, played by Teresa Sanderson.
Bradwell, the editor of the Chicago Legal News, aims to be the first woman admitted to the Illinois State Bar but is blocked by her gender. She takes on the legal fight to spring Lincoln free, after the widow's increasingly erratic behavior caused her only living son, Robert, to have her locked away.
As Bradwell gets swept up in the fight, her agenda becomes more suspect. "This has nothing to do with you anymore," she informs Lincoln. "This is my fight and I will win it."
What Howell and Sanderson give us, under Fran Pruyn's well-paced direction, is as simple and complicated as the story of two exuberantly fleshy personalities — one whose troubles complicate how she's remembered, another whom history has forgotten. They are both mothers trying to find emotional anchors in the aftermath of their grief.
"Mary and Myra" may be a period story, as it unfolds in one trunk-and-footstool-cluttered bedroom in the summer of 1875, yet the story turns on the characters' powerful reversals.
What really sets apart this production: The counterpointed matching of wits of actors Howell and Sanderson is simply terrific.
Howell's Lincoln childishly bounces on her bed, provoking Bradwell to join her. She waves her fingers with vain excitement before she opens a package of mourning caps, and then with almost as much pleasure, dismissively tosses them out the window when the design doesn't please her. Sanderson's Bradwell conveys her intellectual superiority as she triumphantly brandishes the newspaper articles that reveal her legal strategy.
Mary needs help, even as she pushes her friend away with a gentle rain of blows. Myra needs to be a legal savior, the person holding the umbrella in a storm.
Is Mary Lincoln off her rocker, or just suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome after the assassination of the husband she refers to as "The Great One"? Is Bradwell driven by compassion or her own need for intellectual acclaim? Who is really crazy here?
In big, showy roles, both actors effectively manage their characters' period corsets and sweeping skirts (richly designed by Michael Nielsen) as deftly as they mine the story's ironic humor and their characters' physical face-offs. Those costumes (all black for Lincoln, and aggressively patterned for Bradwell) are an example of the production's thoughtful design. Jesse Portillo's lighting conveys Lincoln's haunted nights, while Thomas George's scenic design makes visible her cluttered heart. Mikal Troy Klee's evocative sound design helps the story reach beyond its history.
As the best historically based stories do, I admit "Mary and Myra" sparked me to do some clicking down internet rabbit holes to learn more about Filloux's slant on the facts of these women's lives. But beyond the play's historical relevance, I've been thinking about these performances for days now, thinking of all the crazy-making griefs and regrets that divide and bond contemporary Americans. Thinking about the teeter-tottering emotions sparked by family traumas, I applaud the production for what it does so well: Create characters that reverberate in a country where we're still fighting about gender issues and misogyny.
facebook.com/ellen.weist —
'Mary and Myra'
Two big performances by agile, authentic actors make this historical story of a complicated relationship freshly relevant.
When • Reviewed Saturday, Oct. 29; continues Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through Nov. 12, with an extra matinee Nov. 12 at 2 p.m.
Where • Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center's Black Box Theatre, 138 W. Broadway, Salt Lake City
Tickets • $20; $15 for students and seniors; 801-355-ARTS; pygmalionproductions.org
Running time • Two hours, including one intermission