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Apr 14, 2015 · By Bruce Handy. April 14, 2015. From Buyenlarge/Getty Images. Our American Cousin, a once-popular comedy, is the play Abraham Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in ...
- From Flop to Franchise
- What’s The Story of ‘Our American Cousin’?
- Not-So-Ugly American
- New England Stereotype
- The Yankee Hero
- Joseph Jefferson, The Original Asa
- Laura Keene: The Woman Behind ‘Cousin’
- Female Success Story
- The ‘Cousin’ Curse
- ‘Our American Cousin’ Today
The tragedy made “Our American Cousin” a footnote in American history. But the play had already achieved a noteworthy spot in popular culture as arguably the best-loved script of its era. “Cousin” was a mid-career work by prolific British writer Tom Taylor, for decades a regular contributor to Punch and author of some 100 plays. “Our American Cousi...
The real “Our American Cousin” takes place at the English country estate of Sir Edward Trenchard. The baronet’s guests include Lord Dundreary, a rather befuddled sort, and widowed Mrs. Mountchessington, towing two daughters for whom she is relentlessly hunting husbands. Problems abound: Sir Edward is busted, and Richard Coyle, his estate agent, is ...
But over the next two acts his inventiveness and good heart manage to solve the Trenchard family problems. “I’m a rough sort of character, and don’t know much about the ways of great folks,” Asa muses. “But I’ve got a cool head, a stout arm, and a willing heart, and I think I can help.” Asa finds and filches Dundreary’s hair dye, holding the goop h...
It’s not random that Cousin Asa hails from New England. The unsophisticated but clever and compassionate Yankee had long been a staple of American stage comedies in which a protagonist solves problems bedeviling folks richer and better educated but much less imaginative. Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural historian Howard Mumford Jones noted that this...
Version by version, in the decades after “The Contrast,” that clever rustic evolved from second banana to the spotlight role. The core humor in these fish-out-of-water comedies derived from cultural clash. The homespun simplicity of the untutored American and the effete culture of the upper-class British — and their mutual misunderstandings — may h...
The part of Asa originated with Joseph Jefferson. At 29, Jefferson had been eking out a living as an actor since age 3; being cast at Asa made his career. Not only was the play a hit, but Jefferson brought into being a new performing style that dropped set stage conventions, presenting Asa as a real person with feelings and not just a walking, talk...
Neither Jefferson nor Sothern were in the “Our American Cousin” company that performed at Ford’s that fateful night in 1865. But the star of the original production was there, billed in big type above the title for the Ford’s performance. Her part was neither the biggest nor the most demanding, but there is no doubt that she was the dominant figure...
But Keene, ambitious and bold, wanted much more than avid fans. At the end of 1853, she relocated to Baltimore, arranged a three-month lease on the Charles Street Theatre and not only starred in plays there but directed shows and managed the theatre. “While theatrical management was a risky endeavor compared to the relatively secure position of a l...
After the assassination, given that Lincoln’s slayer was an actor, the entire “Our American Cousin” cast at Ford’s came under suspicion. Booth had had nothing to do with Keene’s troupe, but she and other members were arrested. She quickly convinced authorities that she had no connection to the killing and resumed her tour in Cincinnati. In 1869, sh...
“Our American Cousin”’s unsophisticated structure grew long in the tooth and vanished from the boards only, like Cousin Asa getting himself or someone else out of a jam, to find in the 21st century new life as a blend of historical oddity and enjoyable night of theatre. The scene of the crime, restored as an active showplace in 1968, rebuffs freque...
- Daniel B. Moskowitz
Nov 27, 2023 · Is "Our American Cousin" funny? Perhaps at one time, but there's no question but that it's dated. Writing in Vanity Fair, Bruce Handy says that once you get past the "cornpone" humor, it "has a charmingly deliberate goofiness, a sense of humor about its own dumbness." He also notes that a modern-day goofy comic actor like Zach Galifianakis or ...
Apr 3, 2015 · Bruce Handy reviews Our American Cousin, the comic play that Lincoln saw the night he was killed. By Bruce Handy. April 14, 2015. BRUCE HANDY ON CULTURE.
- Condé Nast
A Night at the Theatre. The night of April 14th, 1865, attendees of Ford’s Theatre expected to see a regular performance of Our American Cousin. Little did they know that what they would see that night would change the course of American history. Playbills printed on April 14, 1865 announced President Abraham Lincoln’s attendance at a ...
Sep 13, 2022 · The tragedy made Our American Cousin a footnote in American history. But the play had already achieved a noteworthy spot in popular culture as arguably the best-loved script of its era. Cousin was a mid-career work by prolific British writer Tom Taylor, for decades a regular contributor to Punch and author of some 100 plays.
Our American Cousin is a three-act play by English playwright Tom Taylor. It is a farce featuring awkward, boorish American Asa Trenchard, who is introduced to his aristocratic English relatives when he goes to England to claim the family estate. The play premiered with great success at Laura Keene's Theatre in New York City in 1858, with Laura ...
