CAPE MAY – The allocution of the boondocks in Cape May this ages is a alpine barbate man who on any accustomed day can be begin aimless on the Washington Street capital like any added tourist. He is in accidental clothes, cutting a baseball cap backwards, eyeglasses to advance his vision, a T-shirt assuming Abraham Lincoln benumbed a bicycle, and absolutely accustomed trousers and shoes.
On best nights a alteration takes abode at the Cape May Presbyterian Abbey and this aforementioned man wears a top hat, apron coat, trousers and shoes from the 1800s.
Welcome to Cape May, Abraham Lincoln. It is the aboriginal time he has been actuality back he was or was not a company with his wife on July 31, 1849.
This time, of course, it is a affected reincarnation by amateur Tom Byrn, whose roots are in Baldwin on Long Island and who is so alive that he cannot affirmation a home any more. He has acted in Baltimore, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey and anon afterwards his run actuality he hopes to be traveling to Istanbul in Turkey area he will be teaching Shakespeare.
But today he is aglow from continuing ovations he has been accepting from audiences afterwards ceremony of his one-man performances that will abide at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday through Saturday nights until July 25 at the Presbyterian church, bend of Hughes and Decatur streets.
The Cape May performances were of added acceptation for Byrn. Seven associates of his family, one from as far west as Colorado, came to Cape May to see the appearance and acclimated it as allotment of a ancestors alliance that included dining at several bounded restaurants. They busy a abode in the Del Haven area of Middle Townshp as their home abroad from home.
The play, “Mr. Lincoln,” accounting by Herbert Mitgang and produced on Broadway in 1980, was a claiming for Byrn, who usually is a quick learner.
“There were so abounding curve and some of the accent was a little archaic,” Byrn said. “It took me two-and-a-half months to get the curve down.”
He additionally spent abounding hours researching Lincoln at libraries in alertness for the performance, which is actuality presented on the 150th ceremony of his assassination.
This is the seventh comedy in which Byrn has acted for the East Lynne Amphitheater Company. He is additionally alive in the acreage of writing, accepting served as co-editor of the barter album “Letters to the Editor” which, as the name indicates, independent a alternation of belletrist beatific to newspapers, some printed afterwards actuality active adverse to acceptable journalism ethics.
Byrn started his acting career aboriginal in Baldwin back he appeared in the role of the baron in an elementary academy assembly of “The Baron and I.” That set him off on a career that took him through Vassar College, area he majored in English, and to new vistas in the theater.
What’s in the approaching for Byrn afterwards he turns in his Lincoln apparel and teaches the Turkish acceptance about the Bard of Avon?
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll aloof affectionate of move ahead.”
