Robert Parsons, Rick Foucheux and Sarah Zimmerman in “The Rivalry.” Photo by T.Charles-Erickson.

It was a classic case of the lanky, brainy, agitating underdog versus the stouter, more experienced, more appeasement-minded line-tower.

But must we reopen O’Brien v. Leno while the wounds are still fresh?

Then let us confab instead, my fellow Americans, about The Rivalry, Ford’s Theatre‘s often-clunky, still-stirring remount of radio great Norman Corwin’s 1958 dramatization of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of a century earlier. The show opened directly opposite the State of the Union address the other night, and not the least of its charms is its reminder that however imperiled our union may at present be, it could be — and has been — worse.

But how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

Not quite as intriguing as its more contemplative year-old bookend — the original commission The Heavens Are Hung in Black, which showed us the later, insomniac, hand-wringing Lincoln — but still a perfectly justifiable expenditure of two-and-a-half hours. Especially if you read Assassination Vacation twice and then listened to the audio version.