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Jefferson’s closet
Monticel’ is inconsistent but compelling
BY IRIS FANGER
Monticel’
By Russell Lees. Directed by Wesley Savick. Set by Richard Chambers. Costumes by Gail Astrid Buckley. Lighting by Diana Kesselschmidt. Original music and sound by Haddon Kime. Choreography by Judith Chaffee. With Steven Barkhimer, Charles Weinstein, Vincent E. Siders, Sharifa Johnson Atkins, Birgit Huppuch, and Nigel Gore. At Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through December 21.


Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, was considered one of the most liberal and democratic men of his times, but as a gentleman of Virginia he kept slaves to run his beloved home, Monticello. Playwright Russell Lees, who took on a more recent president in his popular play Nixon’s Nixon, has seized upon this contradiction in Jefferson’s character as the pivotal point of his fascinating but flawed new drama Monticel’.

The play takes place at Monticello in 1800, soon after the Federalist party has lost that year’s election. Republican candidates Jefferson and Aaron Burr are locked in a tie for the presidency. The decision has been thrown to the House of Representatives, which seems to be at an impasse. But the political affairs are less important to Lees than are Jefferson the man and his relationships with his house slave Sally Hemings and her brother James, whom he freed five years earlier. For history buffs, the story of Sally Hemings will be familiar; recent DNA tests have suggested that at least one of her children was fathered by the president.

Monticel’ begins when James Hemings returns to Virginia after the life of a freed slave in Philadelphia proves less than a sojourn in the Promised Land. A prodigal on the run, plagued by conflicting feelings about his one-time master, he’s bent on making trouble for Jefferson and for the sister who seems content with her place in the mansion on the hill. James finds an ally in Patsy Jefferson Randolph, Jefferson’s grown daughter, who is jealous of Sally’s position.

The tie between Jefferson and Sally Hemings is never discussed by the other characters; however, several of the most effective scenes are those between master and slave, or committed lovers, depending on your viewpoint. Lees suggests the former relation, with Jefferson speaking in a poetic and voyeuristic monologue of Sally in her shift dripping water down her arms at her toilette. "These are the things I possess, these are mine," he says. It’s as sexy a scene as we’ve had on our stages in a long time, proving that neither explicit pawing nor nudity is needed to convey heat.

Despite inconsistencies in Lees’s telling of the tale, particularly in mixing fact and speculation, the play has been given an impressive production. Wesley Savick directs it with an understanding that a playwright’s conjecture might be just a dream: he spreads the action out an imaginative set by Richard Chambers that evokes both time and history. Making brilliant use of every level of the small theater, Savick blocks the monologues and expository speeches of the actors on an elevated platform behind a huge, framed architectural drawing of Monticello. Chambers has painted the stage as an American flag colored in grays, whites, and blacks and has placed three enormous columns — one of them broken — at the side of the stage.

Vincent E. Siders gives a powerful portrayal of James Hemings that almost overwhelms the other actors. He towers over Nigel Gore’s Jefferson, even though the president was 6’2" in real life and credited with a presence of his own. Gore plays Jefferson too close to his period vest and ruffled shirt; if he’s threatened by Hemings and the volatile events that unfold, he never lets on. The performance is no match for the explosions from Siders. Birgit Huppuch as Patsy Randolph is silly, troubled, and ultimately villainous, in contrast with Sharifa Johnson Atkins’s dignified Sally. Steven Barkhimer as the slimy journalist James E. Callender, who disclosed the affair during Jefferson’s lifetime, and Charles Weinstein as Francis Williams, a Federalist congressman, complete the competent cast.

Lees has a compelling subject for his exploration of Jefferson the man versus Jefferson the legend, but he needs one more draft to clarify the politics. Don’t let that stop you from seeing the play now, though. I guarantee that the ending will teach you more than any textbook about the conditions of slavery and why it continues to echo in our collective psyche.


Issue Date: December 12 - 18, 2003
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