Tom Dugan provides a brilliant portrait of Robert E. Lee

By Cynthia Citron

Cynthia Citron

BEVERLY HILLS, California —  “History is written in black and white, but life is lived in shades of gray.”

In this case, the “shades of gray” refers not only to the ambiguous judgments of history, but also to the colors worn by the defeated soldiers of the secessionist Confederacy during the Civil War.

Actor/playwright Tom Dugan brings that devastating period to vibrant life in his tour de force performance as General Robert E. Lee in the Los Angeles premiere of Robert E. Lee – Shades of Gray.

In his brilliant two-hour portrayal, Dugan begins as Lee waits in the Appomattox Court House for the arrival of General Ulysses S. Grant, to whom he will surrender, thus ending the bitter bloodshed of The  War Between the States.

As he ruminates on what posterity will have to say about him, he wonders whether, after 32 years of service in the Army, he will be considered a patriot or a traitor.

He notes wryly that Confederate President Jefferson Davis has sent him a mixed message: orders to have his troops begin staging a guerilla war—and a pen with which to sign the document of surrender.

He also notes that President Lincoln had offered him the post of field commander for the entire Union Army, which he had refused on the grounds that he is a Southerner.  “My ambition is to do what is right,” he says.  “The Mexican War was wicked,” he comments, “but the Civil War is an apocalypse.”

And, he adds, “It’s better to suffer evil than to commit it.”

Dugan’s research into Lee’s life uncovers many paradoxes in American history.  One example: after the Mayflower delivered its first shipload of settlers to the New World, it sailed to Africa to pick up a load of slaves to serve the new colonists.

Lee’s personal history includes the fact that his father, who was a hero of the Revolutionary War and a Governor of Virginia, wound up years later in debtor’s prison.  Lee’s wife Mary was the step-great-granddaughter of George Washington.  Lee’s home in Arlington, Virginia, became the site of the nation’s most prestigious military burial ground, Arlington National Cemetery.  And Lee, during his years as a student, teacher, and Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point, had known most of the commanding officers on both sides of the Civil War.

In a devastating rundown of his generals, in fact, Lee describes in withering detail the deficiencies of each, and in his spectacular denunciations manages to fill the stage with their idiosyncratic specters.  (Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, for instance, had a disconcerting habit of not looking people in the eye, but to the side of their head, which Lee evokes by noting, “Jackson looked me straight in the ear and said…”)

He also assesses each of their abilities—or lack thereof—in warfare.  General George McClellan’s pride caused him to withdraw from Richmond, according to Lee.  “Our independent spirit is our greatest strength,” he notes, “and our pride is our greatest weakness.”

He fumes about General James Longstreet, who was supposed to lead an attack at dawn but didn’t get around to it until four in the afternoon.  And he complains that at Gettysburg his commanders, having anticipated defeat, didn’t follow up after their first attack.  “I have had the help of ‘gifted amateurs’,” he writes to President Lincoln.

He also remarks on the doggedness of General Grant, who wouldn’t decrease the ferocity of the Union attacks even though he was losing 1700 men a day.

It’s a rich and gripping performance, aided and abetted by the keen direction of Mel Johnson Jr., the fine lighting and special effects of Kate Barrett, the original music recordings of Mark Hart and the Fifth Alabama Infantry Regiment Band, and the explosive sound design prepared by Richard Allan.

In the end, Dugan’s portrayal of Lee artfully reveals the human side of a just and moral man, one so trusted and beloved that he was even suggested as a possible presidential candidate in 1868.  “All the surviving Confederate generals wrote books after the war blaming everyone else for their defeat,” Dugan notes, “but nobody had a word of criticism of Robert E. Lee.

“As time goes on,” he continues, “history becomes fictionalized and makes us long for the good old days.”  But there are no “good old days,” he says.  Life is lived in shades of gray.

Robert E. Lee – Shades of Gray,will take a brief hiatus and then reopen on July 30th.  It will run Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. through August 22nd at Theatre 40 at the Reuben Cordova Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Drive, in Beverly Hills.  Theatre 40 is a professional theatre company located on the campus of Beverly Hills High School.  To order tickets, call (310) 364-3606

This is a script for the ages, and so is Tom Dugan’s performance!

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Citron is Los Angeles bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World.  She may be contacted at cynthia.citron@sdjewishworld.com