The letters of John Adams and his wife Abigail

May 22, 2003 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

The letters of John Adams and his wife Abigail that form the dialog of American Primitive now playing on the Unicorn Stage of the Berkshire Theatre Festival have a zesty vitality that brings dynamically and movingly to life not only the authors of the letters but the critical historical time in which they were written.

Playwright William Gibson has fashioned his play skillfully, weaving journal entries with letters, altering chronological time sequences for startling effects, but always using only the original words of the John and Abigail to tell their story.

However this is never a static play. Though occasionally the action may briefly involve John or Abigail sitting, quill in hand and ink bottle at the ready, more often their lines are enacted in spirited confrontations, tender reproaches, lonely cries of passion, and determined willingness to go on despite separation, the violence of war, and the painful losses of the deaths of loved ones.

The dramatic scenes are enacted on the skillfully designed setting of Daniel George that is both Braintree, the country home where Adams’ wife and children are left, and Philadelphia where his role in the war and the struggles for independence have taken him.

John Adams, often a reluctant and angry actor in the political events into which life has thrust him, is played effectively by Brian Wallace. His character, despite his brilliance of mind and love for his country and family, is one more difficult to love. Abigail, feisty, courageous, tender, and poignant is a truly admirable woman whom Tabitha McKown has made her own.

Supported by a chorus of four versatile actors, two soldiers (one American and one British) and two young children, the play moves with a brisk pace, loud scenes of violence and alarm counter-pointed by tender moments when the adults yearn for each others’ supporting and passionate arms, when the children ask when papa will come home, and when Abigail in agony bears a still-born daughter, or buries her mother, and when John, only many days, later will read of the “five deaths in six months.”

The young actors in this company, and they are all young and vital, swirl deftly into whatever supporting role is indicated, carrying the play on with a swiftness that makes it seem shorter than it is.

The war that engulfs them, the young country that John Adams finds himself involved in defying England and shaping freedom (the time is 1774-77) is always in the background. A map high on a scaffold above the stage charts the war as two soldiers, one in red and one in blue move the red and blue arrows of battle indicating victories and defeats.

But the action is on the stage below where Abigail, in John’s absence, must have herself and the children inoculated for small-pox, must ladle soup for fleeing refugees, must bear her still-born daughter.

While John, uneasy at best with his fellow patriots and doubtful and distrustful of the mob spirit of many of the revolutionaries, must try and fight for the bigger picture, the chaos that could become a country. So he barks out his angry commands, yearns for the wife and children left behind in Braintree, complains that he is fighting for freedom at a cost that posterity will never know. And yet, beyond the limits of the play, he will have to go to France, stretching the separation even tauter.

Gibson’s careful arranging, while concentrating on the three vital years the play mainly covers, manages to weave in past and future events as well. Abigail in a small vignette leafs through early love letters received when she was still 17 years old and Abigail Smith.

And even more poignantly, the child John, engagingly played by Harry Wilkins, stands silently before us evoking John Quincy Adams, the 6th president of the nation that the events in the play show us as coming into being.

Such moments are fleeing and subtle, one could almost miss them. They are as subtle as Olivera Gajic, costume designer changing the garb of the American soldier on the balcony. As subtle as the moment when lighting designer Tina Louise Jones creates a grave in a rectangle of white light, or so encircles a small brief domestic tableaux with a golden halo.

This is a play lovingly and minutely constructed. John and Abigail were an unusual and articulate couple. Their story is a great one and is played out greatly on the Unicorn stage.

Although the recent war in Iraq suggests parallels. The great difference is in the telling. Speed, via video cameras and e-mail changed the dynamics. Somehow, that less automated world of quill pens and words preserved on paper compresses and in the end tells us more.

The events of 1776 were of enormous importance. It is wonderful that two such articulate human beings recorded them, and that William Gibson has lovingly sort ed them out for us to share. American Primitive is a rewarding experience.