MRS PRESIDENT

Charing Cross Theatre

★★★

“exciting and compelling to watch”

There are a few key questions at the heart of Mrs President, a reworked and deepened version of John Ransom Phillips’ play, first presented last year. Who gets to control your image, especially when a visual representation is intended to enter the public domain as a painting or a photograph? Is the subject in control, or the creator? Then, once the portrait gets set in collective memory, can the real person behind it ever be truly known or understood? Questions for our time, perhaps.

Mrs President reimagines the story of Mary Todd Lincoln as a series of scenes set in a photographer’s studio after critical moments in her life – becoming the First Lady, the death of her son Willie and the assassination of her husband, President Abraham Lincoln. Shunned by society, accused of treason, and struggling with grief, she approaches photographer Mathew Brady to create a portrait that will show the world who she really is. But Brady has his own ideas and their fraught collaboration becomes a psychological exploration of truth, identity and agency.

Keala Settle plays Mary Todd Lincoln. It is an inspired piece of casting. Settle first grabbed attention in the film ‘The Greatest Showman’ when, as the bearded lady, she belted out the song ‘This is me’. As Lincoln fights for control of her image with Brady – Hal Fowler – that cry for recognition is at the heart of the battle. Although this is a non-singing role for Settle, she brings all the power of her voice and commanding presence to give us a towering performance as the misunderstood wife.

Fowler has a lot to do. Through a number of dream-like sequences and transitions designed to illustrate Lincoln’s complex journey, he takes on many parts, from the artist James Audubon, to the judge Marion R.M Wallace who committed Lincoln to an asylum as legally insane. As a result, his character as Brady is never fully developed, and he comes over as rather weak, which is a shame because Brady himself achieved renown for his pioneering work in the Civil War and after. But this is not his story.

The technical achievement is particularly notable. Director Bronagh Lagan and a very strong creative team work with a single-set stage – suitably enclosed within a gilded picture frame – using lighting and video projection to illustrate and support the narrative. This is critical because there are so many shifts and transitions, between characters, time, emotional states and narrative that the play threatens to descend into chaos but survives just in time – no doubt an echo of Lincoln’s life itself.

This complexity makes Mrs President exciting and compelling to watch, but not straightforward. I did a bit of background reading before coming to the show and some familiarity with Mary Todd Lincoln’s story definitely enhances appreciation of the nuances. In the end, as written and probably intended, the underlying question was never really answered. Just who was Mary Todd Lincoln? We are left wondering whether she even knew herself – and whether a photograph could ever show her, even if she did?

MRS PRESIDENT

Charing Cross Theatre

Reviewed on 27th January 2026

by Louise Sibley

Photography by Pamela Raith

MRS PRESIDENT

★★★

“an hour of tremendous fun”

Down in the depths of the underground warren of spaces near Waterloo, the Vikings have arrived and are in battle. Or are planning their invasion of Northumbria. Or are celebrating their success with stories. I was never fully clear about what was going on, but then I don’t suppose the Viking warriors and their women were either, when the spirit of Valhalla gripped them.

Writer and performer Charlie Blanshard has brought to London his immersive re-imagining of the roaring times of 866 – and there was a lot of roaring. This is the aftermath of the fall of Eoforwic (York) to the Great Heathen Army. We are seated in the square, in the hall and throne room, with Ubbe (Charlie Blanshard), the army’s leader and first son of Ragnar Lodbrok, legendary Norse hero. With songs and toasts a-plenty we are helping Ubbe celebrate the revenge that he has wreaked on the Saxon King of Northumbria who – in the saga of Ragnar and his sons – captured and executed his father.

But all is not entirely well with Ubbe – his younger brother is set to become the king, usurping Ubbe’s rightful place as the eldest son, and his name is going to sink into obscurity. Well, not quite, since we are here. The key protagonist in teasing out the story of Ubbe is a sort of Everyman figure (Blanshard) a soldier, an advisor to Ubbe, or his guiding spirit who reminds us of our own fates as nameless heroes of history.

Blanshard has done a great job of bringing the Viking saga and its oral traditions to life. JORVIC has transferred to the basement of The Glitch from the JORVIC Viking Centre where, one assumes, he would have a lot more props to work with. Oliver Strong is a convincing Viking with painted face and stentorian tones. Strong exhibits less of the physicality we might expect but certainly has the blonde looks. The performance space is bare except for a few LED candles but it is suitably dark and forbidding. While the only players are Blanshard and Strong, they have an audience of around 30 people to turn into an army – which they do, to great effect. Audience members are selected for parts to accompany the dialogue between Ubbe and his soldier companion. We all get to sing and thump our chests – a very enjoyable and lively bit of audience participation.

Altogether, this is an hour of tremendous fun spent in the company of the Vikings of York’s history. It’s probably more participative than immersive. An excellent outcome was the prompt to learn a bit more about the history of Ragnar and his Sons, which Blanshard – self-described as loud and proud of his Northern roots – must surely want to celebrate.

Tag Archives: Louise Sibley

MRS PRESIDENT

★★★

Charing Cross Theatre

MRS PRESIDENT

Charing Cross Theatre

★★★

“exciting and compelling to watch”