L-R: Benjamin Sterling (as Lieutenant Kelly) and Ames Adamson

 (as Benjamin Butler)                         photos by Carol Posegg

 

 

 

                                           By Eugene Paul

 

If playwright Richard Strand foresees Butler as the initial offering in what could turn out to be “The Chronicles of General Benjamin Butler or the Beast of New Orleans” such a title might be rather unwieldy yet confining considering the scope of Butler’s impact from the Civil War onward.  His was a gallery of singular events and activities and methinks playwright Brand has hit pay dirt.  Moreover, his play, Butler, tackles particularly prickly problems with humor and understanding, and is an unexpected blessing these anxious days on the subject of race, a continuing plague since the days of the young United States. Not that he resolves anything, but who can, when you’re still looking for the better angels in us to manifest?

 

It’s 1861, early in the Civil War, the War Between the States, and we are in Union general Benjamin F. Butler’s quarters at Fort Monroe, Virginia.  General Butler (splendid Ames Adamson) has been a general for four weeks and Virginia has seceded only about the same length of time so things are in a mess and getting a hand on whatever situation might seem to be coming up or even already present is dicey.  Which makes the general extra tetchy when his adjutant, Lieutenant Kelly (absolutely sterling Benjamin Sterling) manages to inform him that a Negro slave is on his base and demands to talk to him.

 

John G. Williams (as Shepard Mallory) and Ames Adamson (as Benjamin Butler)

General Butler spears Kelly with an exasperated, flinty eye and avows that he is astonished.  Might as well get some fun out of this murky twist in present murky conditions and straight arrow Kelly becomes the frazzled butt of Butler’s humor.  We are entertained, at least one eyebrow raised, until said demanding slave, once he has been made to see that beseeching might better be the order of the day confronts the dragon, General Butler and the double edged fun begins. Somehow, general Butler has his recollection jogged when this oddity of a slave (charmingly quirky John G. Williams)  tells him that his name is Shepard Mallory.  Which just happens to be the same family name as that of the colonel in charge of the Confederate fortifications not too far away.  Is there a relationship?  Yes, indeed, there is. Shepard Mallory is a runaway slave from Colonel Mallory.  And so are two other runaway slaves also on General Butler’s base.  Shepard Mallory wants sanctuary.

 

Butler, a lawyer by heart and by profession, cannot grant sanctuary under present conditions, cites military law, protocols, preferences. No sanctuary.  The slaves must be returned to Colonel Mallory.  And not only that, Shepard Mallory is a damned nuisance in his own right, fully determined to join the Union forces. He knows all about the Confederate fortifications, he helped build them. But how can he?  He is a Negro slave.  In a scene stretching our tolerance for the author’s gamesmanship of the play’s problem, notwithstanding its harrowing human overtones, we determine that despite his own sympathies, Butler not only must comply with the law, he must also do so despite a growing connection between him and this odd ball slave.  Which is a source of consternation as well as worry for Lieutenant Kelly, much more a military stickler than his boss.

 

Ames Adamson (as Benjamin Butler) and David Sitler (as Major Cary)

Complications compound when an emissary from Colonel Mallory, ancient dandy Major Cary (fine Daniel Sitler) arrives under a flag of truce to present demands – demands again! – for the return of Colonel Mallory’s property. (And how did he find out about that?)

 

If you sense that you are caught up in the toils of an old fashioned meller you are right.  And everybody is playing it for all it’s worth.  But do not tear up, hackles raised.  Because all of this embroidered badinage turns out to be directly from the true history of General Butler.  Who made history.  Which is our denouement: a firm, legal foundation for the conscription of runaway slaves into the Union army.  And, no, this is not a spoiler; You have to see – and enjoy – how we get there. It’s sure to whet your appetite for the further adventures of the inimitable General Butler.  There are souvenirs manufactured to this very day commemorating him.  If that’s the right word. Butler might choose another. As to this, playwright Strand’s tidy, thoughtful, quietly merry entertainment wrought around a situation fraught with huge potential for high drama, cogent points are lanced – and lanced at us --with humor and charity, something quite novel in these times.

 

Director Joseph Discher has carefully channeled his fine company into fulfilling Strand’s wisely witty path.  All have benefited from designer Jessica Parks’ evocative setting, Patricia Doherty’s story book costumes, Jull Nagle’s smoothly edged lighting, Steve Becket’s sound. Brad Lemons’s fight direction gets a mite out of hand but we choose to go with the genial flow.

                                                        

Butler. At 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59^th Street, near Park Avenue.  Tickets: $25-$70. 212-279-4200. 2 hrs.  Thru Aug 28.