Set in the White House circa 1914-1917, Of Equal Measure has two protagonists (a dramaturgical flaw which ultimately causes grievous problems for the playwright): President Woodrow Wilson (Lawrence Pressman) and Jade Kingston (Michole Briana White). Kingston is a woman of color -- the only one of her kind in the White House -- who works as a stenographer to one of Wilson's advisors, Robert Lansing (Dennis Cockrum), and is thus privy to the life-and-death political battles taking place in the Oval Office.
Wilson, proud of his record as a progressive, had his hands full trying to cope with labor unrest, Pancho Villa's anti-Americanism, the war in Europe and racial strife in the segregated south. Kingston's problems were more personal but just as numerous: trying to keep her job while fending off her boss's sexual advances, having to cope with unsettling family pressures (a needy brother, a journalist cousin squeezing her for inside information).
Gradually, things begin to worsen for both Wilson and Kingston. The former is eaten up with guilt and shame when he goes back on his promise to keep America out of the war; the latter not only gives in to her boss but allows herself to be manipulated by the many racists in the White House (an exception being Wilson's secretary of state, Joseph Tumulty, played by JD Cullum). Barfield's focus goes back and forth between Wilson and Kingston which, combined with a profusion of subplots, makes for an unfortunate confusion of purpose -- until a pattern finally begins to emerge. Her story, we realize, is about Wilson's collapse as a human being -- his principles and common sense desert him before our eyes -- and Kingston's opposite movement in that regard.
Always an upright, intelligent woman, she keeps evolving over the course of the play, becoming a fighter, a hero really. It is that metamorphosis which gives of Equal Measure its strength and stature.
