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Mary and Abraham: The Last Day

2015 · Sibert Theatre, Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois

For one evening at Illinois College's Sibert Theatre, two of the nation's best-known interpreters of the Lincolns shared a single stage to present a pair of one-person plays written by Illinois College alum Ken Bradbury. Pam Brown and Fritz Klein had often appeared together, but the Illinois College Fine Arts Series marked the first time they performed these companion pieces in a single evening — a portrait of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln across the threshold of April 14, 1865.

The program opened with "Now and Forever," Brown's one-woman show as Mary Todd Lincoln. Commissioned by the State of Illinois and played for four years at Springfield's Old State Capitol, it is set in the White House on the late afternoon of April 14, 1865 — Mary has just returned from her last carriage ride with Mr. Lincoln, and the couple are to attend Ford's Theatre that evening. After intermission came Klein's "The Last Full Measure," originally performed at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and on NPR. Set in a room across the street from the Petersen House where the dying President had been carried, it explores what might have passed through Lincoln's mind in the moments immediately after he was shot.

Bradbury, a 1971 graduate of Illinois College and the author of twelve scripts about Abraham Lincoln, forewent royalties for the production, noting that both artists resided in Springfield and that the staging would be cost effective. To open the evening, Elisabeth Werries and Stephanie Soltermann presented an original Bradbury song, "Two Trees."

Songs

• Two Trees — performed by Elisabeth Werries and Stephanie Soltermann

A meditation on two pines grown together in a still forest — "together they grew, together they loved" — until the tall tree is struck by lightning and the smaller withers and joins it, their roots becoming one in death.

The Program

• "Two Trees" — Elisabeth Werries and Stephanie Soltermann
• "Now and Forever" — Pam Brown as Mary Todd Lincoln
• Intermission
• "The Last Full Measure" — Fritz Klein as President Abraham Lincoln

Cast

• Mary Todd Lincoln — Pam Brown
• President Abraham Lincoln — Fritz Klein
• Singer — Elisabeth Werries
• Singer — Stephanie Soltermann

Production Notes

Presented as part of the Illinois College Fine Arts Series at Sibert Theatre in Jacksonville, Illinois, with a Saturday evening curtain at 7:30. Adult tickets were fifteen dollars at the door; students were admitted free.

Pam Brown, who holds a degree in acting and directing from the University of Oklahoma, has portrayed Mary Lincoln across many venues — the Old State Capitol, the Lincoln Home, and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM), where she played the title role in "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln" and appeared in "The Heavens Are Hung in Black" and "The Insanity Re-trial of Mary Todd Lincoln." She also filmed two National Geographic documentaries with Fritz Klein.

Fritz Klein has performed as Lincoln in more than 40 states and internationally, appearing in feature films and on the History Channel, National Geographic, Discovery, and the Smithsonian Channel. Bradbury premiered "The Last Full Measure" with Klein at the Union Theater of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in the fall of 2014, with the play continuing to tour the country through 2016.

Bradbury developed the evening under the working title "Mary and Abraham…the last day" — two one-act, one-person plays with a musical interlude.