Review: NECESSARY SACRIFICES at Ford's Theatre

Ford's Theatre will forever be tied to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln who was assassinated there 156 years ago this week. So amid a lingering pandemic, the otherwise closed stage is offering a radio version of a work it commissioned nine years ago to coincide with the opening of the theater's Center for Education and Leadership.

Richard Hellesen's "Necessary Sacrifices" imagines the interaction when Lincoln was visited by Frederick Douglass with a list of demands twice during the Civil War. Since then it's been produced a number of other places - part drama, part history lesson; most recently in a Zoom production in San Diego.

Having had spectacular success in transposing another work closely tied to the company, "A Christmas Carol," to a radio play last holiday season, Ford's sound designer John Gromada has devised an audio-only version for 2021.

Gone are the wigs, costumes and stove pipe hat that helped conjure a historical diorama on stage. But Gromada, under the direction of Psalmayene 24, adds some nice subtleties to punctuate the sometimes stormy interchanges between the two leaders - pounding on a desk to make a point (slapping a fist into a palm when furniture isn't around), rattling papers on a desk, the wooden floorboards and Oval Office chairs squeaking beneath them). A couple of times, spirituals are piped in at the beginning and the end, representing what Douglass calls, "Songs from my bondage [that] followed me."

Craig Wallace, who originated the role (at the last minute) in 2012, returns with authority as Douglass, who calls the president "Excellency" but questions his commitment to helping the formerly enslaved into equality despite signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Wallace had also been a standout as Scrooge in Ford's "A Christmas Carol" for the past five years, the most recent also in a radio version.

Paul Morella (whose "Carol" connection is at the Onley Theater Center) takes up the Lincoln role originated by David Selby. It's a tricky feat, as the higher-pitched tone that's historically accurate is at odds with the timeless wisdom he often imparted. Yet Morella is capable of becoming welcoming to the Black leader he has heard about but never met before he took it upon himself to visit the White House on his own volition. Morella's Lincoln is folksy, but impassioned, able to equal Wallace's booming tones as Douglass as the two are at odds at how to approach the tragic moral rift in the country.

Lincoln feels he can't move faster than the country; Douglass won't accept half measures. And yet the two listen to each other and ultimately come to respect one another in these two meetings in 1863 and '64 that history tells us occurred, but not what exactly was said.

Hellesen's imagined dialog is probably more packed with eloquence and high ideals than what may have occurred; they barely take time to sip their coffee. But the issues that come up are, in a way that may be shocking to modern audiences, still in the national discussion, from equality before the law to the right to vote. Douglass demands equal pay for Black soldiers joining the Union Army; they were only getting $7 a month to the white soldiers' $13 and weren't even guaranteed full rights as a citizen at war's end.

That Douglass comes off as more strident than the President probably has more to do with Hellesen's script, which takes more time to show Lincoln's folksy qualities.

Ford's knows the drama makes for a stimulating history lesson, and so has made the work available for classrooms at a time when not every student is allowed back to school, providing supplemental teacher lessons and student questions.

It's also free for everyone else, and a welcome addition to the current national discussions of racial reckoning and the considerable work that remains to be done to "do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace," as Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural.

Running time: One hour, 19 minutes.

Photo credit: Library of Congress and National Portrait Gallery

"Necessary Sacrifices" is available through May 30 on the Ford's Theatre website. It will also be broadcast on WPFW 89.3 FM April 15 at 5 p.m., accompanied by an on-air discussion, and April 21 at 3 p.m.

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