The moment is almost over before you realize you've been waiting for it. A famous actor known only for his stage work
is confronted by multiple television cameras viewing him from every angle, and providing close-ups and long shots to a
viewing audience of millions. Is this performance more or less real than his work in live theatre, of which no records exist
as he died years before motion-picture cameras were invented?

The relationships between art and truth and the camera and the naked eye are at the center of The Booth Variations, the
new play at 59E59. The actor in question - the great Edwin Booth - overwhelms the cameras as one imagines he must
have his live audiences, but giving this particular performance how could he not? Occurring only months after Edwin's
brother - John Wilkes - assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, Edwin is himself playing Hamlet, resolving to kill a ruler
of a very different sort. Can Edwin communicate this intentionally uncomfortable subject and bring humanity to a man
demonized for his own similar actions?

That question is conclusively answered with the electric performance of Todd Cerveris (who, with Caridad Svich, wrote
the play, and conceived it with Svich and Nick Philippou). He delivers a speech from Hamlet with a gripping intensity and
a sense of previously unrevealed size, tapping into hidden reserves of both light and darkness. His Hamlet demonstrates
not only that Edwin Booth was a master performer, but also a teacher and healer capable of bringing onstage and offstage
events together in a collision of the most enervating theatrical kind.

The combination of Cerveris, the live video feed of him projected onto the theater's rear wall, and the voiceover
performances given by his two stagehand-like costars (Josh Mann and Lila Donnolo), playing two awestruck observers in
the studio's control room, result in a suffusive, breathtaking scene without match in The Booth Variations. Unfortunately,
the dramatic foundation on which the scene is built is not as solid as one would like, and while the production's impressive
visual and aural elements cohere brilliantly here, they feel far less effective elsewhere.

It's most noticeable in the first scene, when young Edwin watches his father (Cerveris, in another video projection) as
King Lear. Here, the video isn't capturing truth, but falsehood: a man going through the physical and vocal paces of an
acting style that Edwin would, eventually, reject in favor of a more naturalistic approach. Yet decades later, when the now
established and beloved Edwin confronts celebrity photographer Matthew Brady (best known today for his Civil War photos),
the camera becomes the ultimate arbiter of truth, mirroring Edwin's own quest for realism while demonstrating how far he
has yet to go.

There's just not a smooth transition from one to the other. The latter scene, however, proves greatly effective as a spiritual
counterpart to the production's climactic television performance; it's an interesting way to explore ideas about how truth is
hidden and exposed, and how cameras reveal what the naked eye might otherwise miss. During much of the rest of the
show, those elaborate projections (by Peter Nigrini, also the show's lighting designer) and precise, motion-conscious
direction (by Philippou) detract from Cerveris and his Booth rather than enhance them, taking a wider view where a narrow
one might be more advisable.

This spells trouble for any show relying less on a linear narrative than on a series of thematically linked scenarios and
meditations; it can be all too easy to disrupt with visual tricks what must be a continuous flow. The videotaped performances
incorporated into the production - which include Cerveris's brother Michael, again playing the role of John Wilkes Booth for
which he just won a Tony in the musical Assassins - are distracting in this way, as is the music by Michael Cerveris and Will
Johnson, which is intentionally modern in sound but doesn't complement the show's ever-creative visuals in either style
or complexity.

The show never seems more interesting than when Todd Cerveris, as Edwin, pulls the necessary strings to allow all the
connections to make themselves. He never does that better than in the play's final two scenes, when Edwin appears before
the television cameras and subsequently takes up the mantle of his Hamlet's real-world counterpart. At these times, the
play's images, ideas, and emotions are never in clearer focus, and the characters of both Edwin and John Wilkes never
seem more alive.

The rest of The Booth Variations, however, seems content to leave history behind it rather than create much of its own.

The Booth Variations at 59E59 Theaters is a sharp, visceral multimedia presentation. Written by theatre virtuosos Todd
Cerveris (who also stars) and Caridad Svich, it's the story not of John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln, but of
Edwin, his brother.

Edwin was a famous actor who followed in his father's theatrical footsteps. Ironically, though well known for his brilliant
Shakespearean portrayals, he was catapulted to stardom only after his brother's infamous act. Audiences came to see the
brother of the man that killed the president, not the actor.

Through video, soundscape and live performance, with original music, Edwin examines his culpability in his brother's fate
and his own career in the face of notoriety. His story is refracted back through the lens of the Civil War, his association with
famed Civil War photographer Matthew Brady, and his own life. Thus as Matthew Brady tells him, "Your mere presence is
your performance" Booth explores the concept of life as a mirror of art.