One day my friend Rachel Kranz, who was researching human trafficking from Africa during the colonial period excitedly called me up out of the blue. She had been researching the slave trade in New Amsterdam during the early years of British imperial control of the city. She wanted to know if I was aware that the first governor of the New York colony, Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, had been a cross-dresser. She urged Theatre Askew to explore the possibility of doing something about him. 

About a week later, I was having coffee with playwright William M. Hoffman (As Is, Ghosts of Versailles). He mentioned that he had a play that Joe Papp had commissioned for the Bicentennial celebration in 1976 but had then decided not to produce. He had cowritten it with his friend Anthony Holland, who had died from suicide while battling AIDS in the late 80s. Bill desperately wanted a New York production, both for his own desire for one last project and as a way to honor Tony. I asked him what the play was about. “Oh, it’s about the first cousin of Queen Anne who, when he was Governer of New York, would dress like her in public. Lord Cornbury. There’s a portrait in the collection of the New York-Historical Society that’s supposedly of him.”

I nearly fell off my chair. This was all too coincidental to be a coincidence, but the play was a complicated period piece and it didn’t seem like we had the resources as a company to pull it off. It also required a powerhouse leading actor in the title role. BIll and Tony originally wrote the part for Zero Mostel, and it required an actor with his level of precision bulldozing. (Bill had a funny story about slipping the script under Mostel’s bathroom door while the star was soaking in the tub.) Later that year my friends at Peculiar Works Project staged a benefit reading with David Greenspan in the title role. Once I saw David’s performance, now I HAD to stage the play. Then Everett Quinton agreed to be in it, and everything else fell into place. If you measure success solely by the number of tickets sold and the amount of press buzz generated, Cornbury was not only Theatre Askew’s most successful project ever, it was a personal best for me as well. For two weeks in January and February 2009, we were the hottest ticket in town.