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Mason Reeves

Franklinland

October 22, 2024

Lloyd Suh writes quirky historical plays from a unique perspective as ironic comedies. In "Franklinland," the latest entry in the EST/Sloan Project, commissioning and developing plays about science and scientists, Suh creates a Benjamin Franklin like you have never seen him depicted before. Unlike Howard Da Silva’s iconic and benevolent Franklin in the now classic musical "1776," this Franklin is crotchety, irascible, arrogant and demanding. In the play’s six scenes covering 33 years, we see him in his fraught and contentious relationship with his illegitimate and only son William who though not a great mind or a scientific genius like his father goes on to do well for himself politically. [more]