President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at the Ford Theatre in Washington D C on 14 April 1865. The play he was watching was Our American Cousin by the prolific British playwright, Tom Taylor.
The comedy was mediocre but it was extremely popular in the US and the UK and its popularity was due entirely to Edward Askew Sothern’s performance as Lord Dundreary, one of the great comic performances of the nineteenth century. Dundreary, with his mutton-chop whiskers, droopy moustache, tartan trousers, ankle-length coat, and monocle was a caricature of an asinine, vain and indolent peer. He simpered, he lisped, he skipped, he bumped into the furniture and he ad-libbed.
Sothern hijacked the play completely and made a supporting character the central character. The high spot was his reading of a letter by his brother. At every performance he had to do an encore. Sothern spawned a whole industry. There were Dundreary shoes, hats, ankle-length coats, dressing-gowns, plaid trousers, long whiskers and monocles. It’s a hard act to follow.
Lydia Parker’s revival is the first London production in more than a century. The absence of Sothern means that the American cousin can now rightly take centre stage. Solomon Mousley is a bit on the young side but knows exactly how to bring out the Yankee’s charm. His funniest scene is when he is courting a girl he has no intention of marrying in the presence of her mama. Interestingly, it was at the climax of this very scene that Lincoln was shot. Booth hoped the laughter would mask the sound of the gun shot.