Dramatizations
There have been a number of modern dramatizations of Edwin Booth's life, on both stage and screen. One of the best known is the 1955 film Prince of Players written by Moss Hart, based loosely on the popular book of that name by Eleanor Ruggles. It was directed by Philip Dunn and stars Richard Burton and Raymond Massey as Edwin and Junius Brutus Booth, Sr., with Charles Bickford and Eva Le Gallienne, who plays Gertrude to Burton's Hamlet. The film depicts events in Booth's life surrounding the assassination of Lincoln by Booth's younger brother.
The Brothers BOOTH!, by W. Stuart McDowell, which focuses on the relationships of the three Booth brothers leading up to the assassination of Lincoln, was workshopped and given a series of staged readings featuring David Strathairn, David Dukes, Angela Goethals, Maryann Plunkett and Stephen Lang at the New Harmony Project, and at The Guthrie Theatre Lab in Minneapolis, and later presented in New York at the Players' Club, the Second Stage Theatre, and the Boston Athenaeum. It was given its first fully staged professional production at the Bristol Riverside Theatre outside Philadelphia in 1992. A second play by the same name, The Brothers Booth, which focuses on "the world of the 1860s theatre and its leading family" was written by Marshell Bradley and staged in New York at the Perry Street Theatre in 2004.
Austin Pendleton's play, Booth, which depicts the early years of the brothers Edwin, Junius and John Wilkes Booth and their father, was produced Off Broadway at the York Theatre, starring Frank Langella as Junius Brutus Booth, Sr. In a review, the play was called "a psychodrama about the legendary theatrical family of the 19th century" by the New York Times. Pendleton had adapted this version from his earlier work, Booth Is Back, produced at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1991-1992 season.
The Tragedian, by playwright and actor Rodney Lee Rogers, is a one-man show about Booth that was produced by PURE Theatre of Charleston, South Carolina, in 2007. It was revived for inclusion in the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival in May and June 2008.
A play by Luigi Creatore called Error of the Moon played off-Broadway on Theatre Row in New York City from August 13 to October 10, 2010. The play is a fictionalized account of Booth's life, hinging on the personal, professional, and political tensions between brothers Edwin and John Wilkes, leading up to the assassination of Lincoln.
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