It is late November 1864. The Civil War is still raging, and President Abraham Lincoln has just been re-elected. At New York's Winter Garden Theatre, the elite of Manhattan have gathered to watch a one-evening-only benefit performance of "Julius Caesar" starring the three most celebrated actors in America, the iconic Booth brothers -- Edwin, Junius Brutus and John Wilkes. Until this evening, the Booths, all greatly admired by the theater-loving President, had never appeared together on the same stage. John, heralded in the tabloids as "the handsomest man in America" is a fervent believer in the Confederate cause, and had already been arrested for his seditious comments about the President and the North. His older brothers Edwin and Junius Brutus, meanwhile, are ardent supporters of Lincoln and the Union. Both before and after the performance of Shakespeare's bloody tragedy, the three brothers spar about politics, theater and the roots of their heated sibling rivalry. The brothers' drama is heightened by the appearance on scene of their mother Mary Ann (whose favorite was always "Johnny") and Benjamin Waters, Edwin's dresser and a former slave, now a free man. A play based, as the saying goes, on true events.