During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln introduced an ex-slave to a debutante. There ensued an unspoken romance. Thirty-six years later they meet again. IF ONLY explores a love and a racial equality that might have been had Lincoln not been assassinated.

Thomas Klingenstein’s play If Only…, directed by Christopher McElroen at the Cherry Lane Theatre, is a moving depiction of the relationship between a white woman and a black man whose matchmaker was Abraham Lincoln. Set in New York in 1901, If Only… sees the two friends and almost lovers suddenly reunited 36 years after Lincoln’s assassination and the end of the Civil War. Ann Astorcott (Melissa Gilbert) has settled down with a wealthy man who works in the stock market (played by Richmond Hoxie), though she’s not exactly sure what he does. In her younger days — “Bohemian” as her husband refers to them — Ann was a Civil War nurse and friend of Lincoln. She did crazy things like pose in the nude for a painting and take a black friend to the opera. Now, she’s left all that behind her, with occasional relapses: she adopts a young orphan girl (Korinne Tetlow), she listens to ragtime music, and she fantasizes about redecorating her parlor in an exotic, Romantic style. Samuel Johnson (Mark Kenneth Smaltz) has become a history teacher in Chicago. In his younger days, he ran away from his master’s plantation, became President Lincoln’s valet, and fought in the Civil War as part of the …Read more