Michael Jesse Bennett's performance for the Babcock Performing Readers on Thursday didn't draw the audience the University of Utah basketball game did. But an impressive number - more than 50 - did show up to hear Bennett. And the drama of the reading was head and shoulders above what drama the game had to offer.
Bennett is best known around the region for his character parts in television commercials, his summer roles in Jackson Hole and his popular one-man shows - stand-up renditions of Dickens, Patrick Henry and Christopher Columbus, all done in full costume.For Thursday's show, however, he didn't dress up. He was himself, with a touch of the humble history professor thrown in for good measure. He kept the dramatics on low heat - at least in the early going where he read excerpts from several pioneer journals.
The "trouble," as Mark Twain used to say, didn't begin until he launched into a B.H. Roberts political speech with the fervor of William Jennings Bryan.
After reading an account of the martyrdom of Joseph Smith written in 1844 by Orson Spencer, Bennett cleverly assembled the writings of four pioneer diarists: Amasa Lyman, William Clayton, Erastus Snow and Wilford Woodruff. Jumping back and forth among them, he used the journal entries to highlight the most bedeviling bugaboo of history: the subjective point-of-view masking itself as objective observation.
While Wilford Woodruff would write lavishly about a "day of adventure" in crossing a river, for instance, William Clayton failed to even mention the event. And accounts of American Indian peace parties would inevitably show conflicting numbers.
The most touching moment came on July 8 when three of the four historians failed to find anything worth recording, while Woodruff had the day of his life. He stole away to fish with the reel and "artificial fly" he'd picked up in Liverpool. It was the first time, he said, that he'd seen anyone use a fly to fish in America.
. . . I watched it as it floated upon the water with as much intense interest as Franklin did his kite when he tried to draw lightning from the skies. And as Franklin received great joy when he saw electricity or lightning descend on his kite string, in like manner was I highly gratified when I saw the nimble trout dart my fly, hook himself & run away with the line. . . . I caught twelve in all and about one half of them would weigh about 3/4 of a pound each, while all the rest of the camp did not catch, during the day, 3 pounds of trout in all. . . .
"Field & Stream" could use a man like Wilford Woodruff.
For his big finish Bennett chose to read a speech that B.H. Roberts delivered at Utah's Constitutional Convention. Roberts opposed women's suffrage because he felt it would hurt Utah's chances for statehood. But as wrongheaded as his notions were, his speech shows that in 1895, political speeches were often heartfelt and flew in the face of constituents, party leaders and the inevitable.
As with so many of Roberts' writings, one came away admiring the man's honesty, integrity and passion while wondering how his sense of the world could be so skeewampus.
As for Bennett, his theatrical timing was just right. He knew when to bow out and leave the crowd wishing for more.
It was a sure way to guarantee he'll be invited back.