Interesting Day at the Old Surratt Hacienda

[wpbinzel]

(07-18-2016 03:42 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Well, history is ruined again. One of the Surratt volunteers saw this production the other day and gave a very disgusted review of it to me on the phone. Now I know why one of the actors commented to me that he didn't like the way history was being screwed up.

According to my source, everything is screwed up! They could not even get Mary Surratt's birthdate correct (1817 instead of the correct 1823). It only got worse from there with lots of "artistic license" and enough profanity to keep modern critics happy.

Bill and Lisa Binzel will be seeing it this week while it is still in D.C. I'll let him give you the scoop. The bad thing is that I understand the attendance has been great. I sure hope some are inspired to visit Surratt House in order to learn the real history.

As Laurie noted, last evening, Lisa and I went to see The Trial of Mrs. Surratt. (Laurie will be happy to hear that they used 1823 as the year of Mrs. Surratt's birth, so at least they fixed that problem.)

When it comes to Mary Surratt, I believe that people are entitled to make up their own minds on her guilt or innocence; but that does not mean they are entitled to make up their own "facts." The Trial of Mrs. Surratt is not historically factual. It is advocacy. And just in case you miss the first four tirades against the use of a military tribunal to try the Lincoln assassination conspirators, it is repeated at least two more times. The “Director’s Note” in the playbill provided a preview of what was to come: “[W]hat is certain is that this American citizen was not given a fair trial and had she had one, her outcome would have been extremely different.” [emphasis in the original] The play makes no effort or allowance for a different perspective or point of view.

There are too many historical inaccuracies to recount them all. When used by virtue of artistic license for the sake of the story or when necessary to move the production along, I am inclined to overlook them. However, this play has too many “unforced errors.” For starters, Joseph Holt is portrayed as a complete imbecile; Secretary of War Stanton (the play’s villain) blackmails Louis Weichmann into testifying against Mrs. Surratt by threatening to leak details of Weichmann’s sexual relationship with John Wilkes Booth to the press; (there are also repeated implications that Booth and John Surratt were lovers as well, but it was lost on me why that was relevant to the story or the production); Booth’s “diary” is withheld from evidence in the trial because it only named Herold, Paine and Atzerodt as co-conspirators, and does not mention any of the others on trial, most notably, Mrs. Surratt; Mrs. Surratt is in chains; the prison guards amuse themselves by savagely beating Ned Spangler; etc. You get the idea.

In the end, I was not sure what was the point of the production. It if was to rail against the use of military tribunals with loosely-based historical figures, then it succeeded. If it was intended to portray historical events, then it seriously missed the mark. My biggest concern with the production is the disservice it does to those in the audience who may be exposed to the subject for the first time. Making up one’s mind based on made-up “facts” is always hazardous.