A Very Nice Performance

[L Verge]

If one believes that Booth shaved off the mustache at Mudd's, I will offer this defense in Dave's having grown one for this performance: one of my biggest problems with first-person presentations of famous people is that I want the performer to look like the person they are portraying. I had reservations as to whether or not Dave could achieve this -- and with the mustache, he did.

My grandson and I arrived early and were sitting in the car (about fifty feet from the courthouse) when a young man with dark hair and mustache and in modern jeans and leather jacket came out of the building to move his car. I did not recognize that it was Dave until he got closer to me; he did indeed look like Booth, even in modern clothes. By the time he was clothed in period garb with a slouch hat on his head, he was 98% JWB to me. His dialogue and the emotion that he put into it completed the transformation IMO.

I just have to say that there were several times that I was afraid Dave would actually end up with a broken leg! He entered stage left shortly before the entire evening commenced, hobbled to what is actually a fairly high raised platform which is always there in the courthouse to represent the judge(s)' raised dais of colonial times, and had to hoist himself up with one leg and a crutch. He plopped (and I do mean plopped) down on his blanket with the left leg stiff from the splint and bandaging. Throughout the first portion of the meeting (about 20 minutes), he remained in character - reading newspapers, writing a bit, etc.

During the performance, there were several times that he stood to deliver his lines and then would plop back down (you probably see that on the video). Achieving those moves with the crutch on a slippery, wooden floor was definitely a problem, and I had visions of him falling off the stage at one point. All I could envision was him ending up with a more serious break than the real JWB!