Jeremy Motz and Kyra Richardson Photo by Scott Pakudaitis

Lincoln's Children pivots between two time periods, today and the mid-1800s, before Lincoln's rise to national prominence. Montgomery Mathers (Jeremy Motz), in the current era, is a Lincoln scholar at the University of Chicago whose successful best-selling books about Lincoln are long behind him, and whose most recent effort was an utter failure. His misery over this is compounded by the death of his beloved wife a couple of years ago. Dr. Mathers is desperate to have his next book restore his status, both financially and professionally, as well as his spirits.

Mathers hires a bright and persuasive graduate assistant, Chloe (Kyra Richardson), to help him with research in the Lincoln archives in Springfield. The focus of his research sounds unlikely to rekindle his waning career, but Chloe wants the job to pursue her own ends. She has traced her lineage back to a woman, also named Chloe (Richardson, again), who had been enslaved by the Todd family in Lexington, Kentucky. Todd daughter, Mary Todd, had married Lincoln and Chloe was "lent" to the couple in their Springfield home, not as a slave (which was outlawed in Illinois), but as an indentured servant (which was legal) with a loophole allowing the family to call her back to Kentucky before the period of indenture was complete, thus returning her to enslavement. Chloe (today's Chloe) wants to learn more about her ancestor's life, in particular about the nature of the relationship between the servant Chloe and Mr. Lincoln.

There are some kernels of truth to the above scenario. There is documentation of an indentured servant (not named Chloe) in the Lincoln's Springfield household. There is no substantiation to the notion that Lincoln had an affair with a Black servant, or with any woman, for that matter. In fact, a documentary film (Lover of Men) on the verge of national release presents a string of evidence that if Lincoln engaged in extramarital sexual relations, it was with men. Lincoln's Children goes nowhere near that speculative path.

So, yes, McGeever exercises a fair amount of creative license in setting up his narrative. And yet, everything that occurs in Lincoln's Children feels like it could have happened. If it doe not have the ring of truth, it has a patina of authenticity. Much of this can be attributed to McGeever's well-crafted dialogue, Duck Washington's muscular direction, and solid performances, especially from the two leads. That, and the fact that we have become accustomed to checking our online news feed in the morning and reading things that would be shocking if we had not become immune to being shocked.

We first see Lincoln (Nicholas Nelson) in Washington DC, where he served just one term as a congressman from Illinois, 1848-1849. He makes a speech decrying the Mexican War as an immoral land grab, waged for no purpose but to steal half of Mexico's territory–and the better half, at that–for our own profit and national ambitions. Mary Todd Lincoln (Ariel Pinkerton) tries to stop him, knowing that his outspoken tirade will cost them his seat, but to no avail. The remaining historical scenes are set in their Springfield home where Lincoln resumes his career as a lawyer and the indentured servant Chloe joins their household.

In the contemporary scenes, Mathers tells Chloe, the graduate assistant, that he has hired her for her willingness to argue with him, to point out flaws in his work so that he can strengthen or correct it. However, he does not bargain for Chloe's determination to shift the focus of the work in the direction of secrets no one has ever looked for. There is a surfeit of documentation about white society of the mid 1800s–birth and death certificates, tax bills, purchase agreements, contracts, doctors notes, court records. Who documented the lives of Black people during those same years?

In addition to Professor Mathers and Chloe, we meet Mathers' literary agent, Irma (Dawn Krosnowski), who chides Mathers about his diminishing fortunes; an astute archivist, Ethel Hunter (Winifred Froelich), who rules the roost over the miles of documentation in her care; and Calhoun Alexander (Scott Gilbert), a dyed-in-the-wool southerner and bigot. He was once Mathers' mentor. Now he tears apart Mathers' work, both the flimsiness of his project and the forceful march to discovery being undertaken by Chloe, whom he derides as a DEI hire.

Lincoln's Children is McGeever's first full-length produced play, and while there are some places where the work could be tightened up, it is overall a well-crafted original work that warrants our attention. Fortune's Fool has given it an excellent production, albeit on a thumbnail sized scale, as it is being staged in one of the tiniest performing space in the Twin Cities, the Crane Studio (housed in the same industrial-zone building as the larger Crane Theatre). Washington's direction draws out the distinctions between the modern and historic perspectives, while also revealing the ways in which some things have changed only by degree. The play's two acts pack in a lot of narrative, which plays out fluidly, with clear transitions between "then" and "now."

Richardson gives a startlingly brave performance as Chloe, drawing out inner strength, to survive in Chloe's past and to overcome in Chloe's current life. Richardson radiates energy that lifts up the significance of everything and everyone around her. Jeremy Motz is outstanding as Mathers, every bit the part of an academic whose star is descending, with his sloppy appearance and a desperation to find germs of importance in his arcane work. When he imagines that his new graduate assistant is attracted to him, Motz conveys the sense of a man hanging on to long-expired chapters of his life.

Nelson is extremely compelling as Lincoln, solemnly articulate when making pronouncements, but awkward and uncertain in his personal relations. Pinkerton creates a portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln as a strong woman, craftily working with the resources at hand, including her husband's gifts, to achieve her ambitions, a departure from the image of Mrs. Lincoln we more often see, addled by mental illness in her later life. Krosnowski's Irma conveys a buoyant energy but seems a shade too eager to undermine her client's confidence when one would expect her to be propping him up. Froelich, as the archivist, handles the challenge of overcoming a first impression of being an arrogant racist, to sincerely making amends and proving her mettle as a woman seeking a kernel of power in a man's world. Gilbert's portrayal of the bigoted Calhoun Alexander goes too far, making the character into a caricature to the degree that it is hard to believe Mathers would have tolerated him this long, or, for that matter, that the University of Chicago would have tolerated him. It can be said, though, that he does convey the enduring, destructive power of racism in all its ugliness.

The extremely small Crane Studio does not allow for much in the way of a set, but Keven Lock's design serves the play well. CJ Mantel's costumes are well matched to each of the characters, and seem to have a good fix on the historical garb. Christy Johnson's sound design, Ariel Pinkerton's lighting, and Terri Ristow's prop designs all contribute to the overall success of this production.

There is a lot packed into Lincoln's Children: workplace boundary issues, the inheritance of trauma across generations, the politics of academia, sexism, racism, and most centrally, how do we validate what we think we know about the past. It feels at times as if less might have been more, with a deeper but more narrow focus.

It is also difficult on several occasions to follow the stream of evidence Chloe assembles to argue her case about her ancestor Chloe's life. She is so forceful, especially in Richardson's portrayal, that my own tendency was to not worry about following the details and assume that her arguments are correct. And yet, isn't this a risk we face every day when presented with an avalanche of data, from which competing sides sift out what works or them to arrive at radically different conclusions?

Those reservations aside, Lincoln's Children is a thoughtful, beautifully written and affecting play that raises compelling questions about how we discern the truth from a history that has tried its best to conceal its darkest chapters, and what leeway we can grant alternative means of discovering the truth. With small but plucky Fortune's Fool giving the play an excellent production, I highly recommend it. It is easy to imagine, perhaps with additional work, that Lincoln's Children will have a robust future life in the theater world.

Lincoln's Children, a production from Fortune's Fool Theatre, runs through September 22, 2024, at the Crane Studio Theater, 2303 Kennedy Street N.E., Minneapolis MN. For tickets and information, please visit fortunesfooltheatre.org.

Playwright: Mike McGeever; Director: Duck Washington; Set Design: Keven Lock; Costume Design: CJ Mantel; Lighting Design: Ariel Pinkerton; Sound Design: Christy Johnson; Properties Design: Terri Ristow; Intimacy Director: Anthony Sisler-Neuman; Stage Manager: Christopher Goddard; Producer: Daniel Pinkerton.

Cast: Winifred Froelich (Ethel Hunter), Scott Gilbert (Calhoun Alexander), Dawn Krosnowski (Irma Williams), Jeremy Motz (Montgomery Mathers), Nicholas Nelson (Abraham Lincoln), Ariel Pinkerton (Mary Lincoln), Kyra Richardson (Chloe Jackson/Chloe Waters).