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Political
play with theatrical subtleties The performance of his play at the Lionel Wendt on June 7, displayed his histrionic talents and prodigious memory. It ran for almost two hours, with a brief interval. This was serious one-man theatre; sombre as it went along its changing moods, building audience attention to its two acts of varying length. It was a full-bodied play, because Stephen Holgate brought to it several theatrical subtleties. Sound was provided by Gamini Wasantha and lighting and technical direction by W.L. Rupasinghe. The strength of the play was that Stephen peopled his stage and had the collective imagination of his audience ticking. He conjured up characters, meeting and greeting them with outstretched hand - people in high places, friends and opponents. He had walked a long road, unknown and poor, to become a lawyer and politician, before he reached the highest position in the United States of America, that of President, and was considered the best ever. Stephen has an uncanny resemblance to Abraham Lincoln - one of the reasons which made him choose this play, he says. He walked out to a stage set with the barest essentials - a few chairs at a table with trays for letters coming in and going out, a hat stand and a lectern. These vantage points gave him the flexibility for a natural and meaningful passage from one to the other, as the play progressed. And it was not all politics and statesmanship that were brought into this well-rounded play. There were sketches from the home-front too - like the light banter with his wife over her wanting to buy a new dress for an occasion. After all she was the President's wife! There was also a gently moving and memorable scene by the body of his dead son, very delicately etched. Stephen portrayed Lincoln facing both political friends and admirers and opponents in his office, with varying emotions. There was also a good deal of harsh criticism in the local newspapers, which he had to face, extracts of which he read out to the audience. From 1861 to 1865 the northern and southern regions of the United States had engaged in the bloodiest war ever fought in the New World. By the time the Confederate armies of the South surrendered to the Union armies of the North in April 1865, almost 700,000 Americans had died. The most serious of the social and cultural differences was over the institution of the slavery of Negroes. Lincoln's humanitarian views of the evils of slavery and his vision and belief that all citizens were equal gave him strength to bring in changes. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln's great political rival, opposed him successfully on debates over slavery. At one point in the staging of this drama, Stephen playing Lincoln with deep concern and sincerity for his war-ravaged soldiers, broke down and wept silently on stage, when news came of the gunning down of his men. Lincoln's words - his speeches and proclamations, revolutionized the lives of millions of Americans. Stephen's Abraham Lincoln concluded his tour de force with his immortal Gettysburg Address, from which we have these extracts: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation concerned in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.... The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.... It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.... that we have resolved that those dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.'' Lincoln's great
humanity, his political insights and skills, and his vision of a
country in which all were created equal prevailed over the forces
of division, we learnt, even if that vision was never fully realized. |
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