Laura Rocklyn as Marian Hooper “Clover” Adams. (Teresa Castracane Photography)
With the lights turned down and the walls plastered with reproductions of 19th century photographs, it’s not hard to imagine that the box theater space of Caos on F is a portal into another world. The illusion is sustained when Laura Rocklyn, lead actress of Ally Theatre’s latest show, emerges from behind the stage lights in Victorian costume. As one of her fellow actors told her during a rehearsal, “You’re a case study for past lives.”
“It’s time travel,” Rocklyn told DCist. “Once you’re here and in the audience, you’re in our parlor. And you’re completely immersed in this world.”
This world is 19th century Washington, D.C., and you can see it in Clover, a drama based on the life of Washington socialite Marian Hooper “Clover” Adams. A Boston intellectual, Clover married historian Henry Adams (a member of the political family that spawned two Presidents) and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1877, living not far from the space that now pays dramatic homage to her life—and death. Turning to photography late in her life, Clover found a vocation that would be her downfal. She killed herself by drinking a vial of potassium cyanide, one of the chemicals used to develop film.
After his wife’s suicide, Adams destroyed most existing photos of her and all of the correspondence between them. He doesn’t mention her once in his celebrated 1918 autobiography The Education of Henry Adams. But by all accounts, he mourned her deeply, and commissioned a memorial statue from Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whom Clover loved.
Adams named the statue, The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding, but those familiar with Marian Adams’ grave in Rock Creek Cemetery know it simply as “Grief.”
The Adams memorial is said to have a certain mournful energy and personality. This is undiminished by the fact that there are two replicas of the statue in town. There’s an authorized copy at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. An unauthorized version known as Black Aggie (surrounded by its own legends) once stood in Druid Ridge Cemetery near Baltimore, and can now be found in the courtyard of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Saint-Gaudens’ memorial, and the woman it honors, has inspired a new play. Ty Hallmark, founder and artistic director of Ally Theatre Company, co-wrote the play with Rocklyn, who stars as Clover. Hallmark learned about Adams in her work as a tour guide for Washington Walks. “I would stand in front of the Hay-Adams and tell the story of Clover,” Hallmark says. “The more I told her story, the more I really wanted to know who she was as a person.”
This isn’t the first time Rocklyn has played the role of Clover. As part of Natalie Zanin’s Historic Strolls, Rocklyn, in period costume, delivered a brief monologue based on Clover’s life.
“I was fascinated by that little glimpse I had of her, so I had to research more.” At the end of that monologue, Rocklyn would take out a vial and look at it, ready to kill herself. “I wanted to know what led to this moment,” she says.
The Adams Memorial in Rock Creek Cemetery (Pat Padua)
Without shoehorning Adams into contemporary sensibilities, the playwrights’ take the story of Clover (with some of her dialogue taken from letters to her father that survived her husband’s purge) and make these 19th century figures relatable to a modern audience.
Clover begins soon before she meets Henry Adams (Nick DePinto), which sets up an imperfect match that ends in tragedy. DePinto and Rocklyn are perfectly suited for the 19th century milieu and the play’s shifting tone. Rocklyn explains that in a play that depicts a span of years in just 90 minutes, it’s a challenge to handle emotional shifts in a woman who had a “delight and effervescence that comes through her letters when she was younger. How do we get to the darkness that we associate with the statue?”
The play is an effective domestic drama with a bold gambit; the silent character of Grief (Megan Khaziran) appears at intervals during the play, hovering near Clover and at one point engaging in a mournful dance and embrace.
Caos on F is across the street from a copy of “Grief” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and in October, Ally Theatre plans to hold special walking tours around the neighborhood before certain performances. Whether or not you’re familiar with Adams’ story, Clover is a moving, somber 19th century love story.
This post has been updated with the correct location of the Adams Memorial replica.
Clover runs through October 28 at Caos on F, 923 F Street NW. $25. Buy tickets here.
