"Unflinching" Play About Booth Premieres in Baltimore

By Edward Epstein

Washington, D.C.

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Entertainment A-listers are behind "John Wilkes Booth: One Night Only," a new play described as "darkly funny" and "unflinching" that opens tomorrow at the Baltimore Center Stage.

The author of the new work couldn't bring more impressive credentials to the project. Matthew Weiner is a nine-time Emmy winner for Mad Men, the AMC series about a 1960s' advertising agency. He was also a writer and executive producer on another TV blockbuster series, HBO's "The Sopranos." The director is Stevie Walker-Webb, Baltimore Center Stage's artistic director. He has been nominated for a Tony award for his work on Broadway and won an Obie for his off-Broadway work.

The 110-minute Booth play "is not a history lesson," Weiner said in a Center Stage video. "It's a humanity lesson and it's an American lesson." Weiner, like Booth a Maryland native, has long been interested in Lincoln's assassin, a racist Confederate sympathizer who organized a conspiracy that aimed at assassinating not just Lincoln but also Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. They didn't harm Johnson, but Seward was grievously injured in his Washington home.

"The more research I did, the more I realized the Civil War never ended," Weiner said. He told the Washington Post that his play was partly inspired by the events of Jan. 6, 2021, in the sense of anger and grievance, as the Post put it, that animated the rioters.

The result is a play that "is not a history lesson. It's a humanity lesson and it's an American lesson,' Weiner said.

Walker-Webb said it's appropriate to look at the misbegotten Booth. "We learn more about who we are as Americans by looking at the villains of our past than we do the heroes of our past," he said.

Booth shot President Lincoln in in the back of the head on the evening of Friday, April 14, 1865, as the president and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln attended a performance at Ford's Theatre. The president died the next morning. Booth broke his ankle as he leaped to the Ford's stage but still managed to escape. The all-out hunt for Booth ended on April 26 in Port Royal, Virginia, when a U.S. soldier shot him. He is buried in an unmarked grave in the Booth family plot in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.

The play will run from May 15 to June 15 in downtown Baltimore. Information is available at centerstage.org. It isn't known yet if the play will get further performances elsewhere.

Booth is portrayed by 28-year-old Ben Ahlers, who was seen a few years ago in the HBO series "The Gilded Age."

Booth photo from the National Park Service.