Even though it is not a complete success, Lincoln's Children shows great promise, and Fortune's Fool premiere is buoyed by a number of excellent performances.
Playwright Mike McGeever puts a lot on the table, as he explores both a contemporary historian's search to authenticate her family stories, and one of those stories -- were her ancestor is an indentured servant (essentially, a slave on loan) in Lincoln's Illinois household around 1850.
The women, both named Chloe, negotiate these worlds as best they can. The contemporary Chloe joins with a white Lincoln scholar, Montgomery Mathers, who is looking to recharge his career after some weaker than expected sales.
Chloe thinks she has it. Her family story is that her ancestor served in Lincoln's household, and may have had an intimate relationship with the future president. However, Montgomery wants proof, and the typical sources aren't going to provide that. After all, Black people in America were still property in large parts of the United States, and even in a free state like Illinois, they didn't show up in a lot of the typical records.
In the 1850 side of the story, we see the growing relationship between Lincoln and Chloe, all under the watchful eye of Mary Lincoln. In both cases, Chloe needs to negotiate a world where her skin color causes people to make automatic assumptions about her abilities, intelligence, and motivations.
All of these ideas swirl around the play, but McGeever isn't able to focus them into a fully satisfying show. Plot strands start, but are not given a full exploration. Intriguing characters come and go, but some of the secondary ones lack depth.
Still, the company does an excellent job with the material, led by Kyra Richardson as the dual Chloes, While the characters come from different worlds, Richardson highlights their connections, especially a desire to make the best of a world ready to discount them at every step.
Nicholas Nelson makes for an upright, somewhat imposing Lincoln, while Jeremy Motz has an appropriate, exhausted air as slumping academic Mathers.
Lincoln's Children runs through Sept. 22 at the Crane Theatre.
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