It's April 1865 and the US Civil War is drawing to a close, with a decisive victory for the abolitionist North. Twelve days after murdering President Lincoln, we find John Wilkes Booth, and his companion Davey, hiding in a barn in Virginia, hunted by the blue-coats.
Infamous now, Booth was then already famous as an actor. This dramatised account of his finals hours paints a portrait of an egotistical, melodramatic narcissist, a white supremacist desperate to cling on to privilege, considering himself a hero of the people. Faced with the unsympathetic reality of the newspapers he descends into fantasy and accusations of betrayal. His ego is unable to accept being described as a murderer.
He and Davey play out an alternative reality in which he becomes the hero of the tale, but when the soldiers have surrounded them the young acolyte swiftly surrenders, leaving Booth to die alone.
James MacKenzie gives an excellent performance as the deluded, hate-filled assassin, a persona of outward charm and civilised values giving way to the angry racist when the pressure tells. For the most part Davey, played by Alex Fthenakis, is his willing sidekick, allowing Booth's ego full rein, but there were some confusing contradictions in the character towards the end, and a sense that the script had lost it's way a little. That's a minor criticism of a riveting and thought provoking piece of drama.
An there are plenty of contemporary resonances too. One would hope, one hundred and fifty years on, that the ideas espoused by Booth and his kind would have been utterly discredited and long ignored. Yet here we are with Booth's narcissism evident in the President of the US, and his white supremacist bigotry alive and kicking in Steve Bannon, one of Trump's closest colleagues. The fight to rid the world of Booths, and Farages and Le Pens, is still with us.
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