Things are going well for him, he writes. He’s getting decent parts. Richmond society is very much to his taste. But something about the climate doesn’t agree with him. He’s been ill ever since his arrival and the medication he’s on makes him too dull-witted to learn his lines.

Plus, his identity is not the secret he would like it to be. “I sometimes hear the name of Booth called out from the gallery,” he writes.

—

The American theater world at this time operates primarily on the star system. Edwin is a star. He travels from city to city, performing with one company and then another. Like his father, he’ll arrive for an engagement, perform in seven different plays over a two-week period, and then move on.

The company does not travel. They provide the sets, the staging, and the rest of the cast. This is where John is. He’s called a ute, a utility player who can take on whatever part is required. The plays are familiar to all. One day of rehearsal to manage the blocking is usually all that’s needed once the star arrives. The sets are no more than serviceable. A rustic cabin one night becomes a ship’s interior the next.

Staples include The Marble Heart, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The Last of the Mohicans, and Richelieu. These performances are augmented before and after with dances that show the women’s legs, tableaux, and short farces. Not-art that looks like not-art.

Meanwhile, off in New York, Laura Keene—the same Laura Keene who once took Edwin to Australia—is shaking things up. She’s managing her own theater now, an unusual thing for a woman. At the suggestion of Joseph Jefferson, Mary Devlin’s guardian, she produces a play called The Sea of Ice. The Sea of Ice is an extravaganza. It lasts three and a half hours and demands some difficult staging. A family is stranded by mutineers on an ice floe and the audience must see the floe break apart before their eyes. The Keene company performs The Sea of Ice night after night to packed houses from early November through Christmas.

Her next endeavor, also urged by Jefferson, is even more popular. In 1858, she purchases Our American Cousin from its author, Tom Taylor. She reworks it considerably and it remains a work in progress even as it’s being performed. Bits of physical comedy are added nightly, lines ad-libbed and altered. The relatively minor role of Lord Dundreary expands to the point of madness and suddenly everyone is buying Dundreary scarves, shirts, and collars, speaking in Dundrearyisms (the nonsensical mashing together of two aphorisms as in too many chefs gather no moss). By the time Keene’s play settles into its final form, it’s a phenomenon. Our American Cousin runs for an almost unheard-of one hundred and fifty nights.