★★★

“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?

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOL

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★

“Lauren Ward stands out as Scottie with an emotional and sensitive portrayal”

Much has been written about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald – the iconic, glamorous and tragic ‘Golden Couple’ of the Jazz Age. Even without Fitzgerald’s novels, they need no introduction. The names Scott and Zelda have always remained the central figures of their era, epitomising its excesses. The focus is nearly always drawn to Scott’s heavy drinking and early death, and Zelda’s mental disorders and institutionalisation. Their story has become the template of the self-destructive side effects of creativity and fame, and their tragic marriage and career an irresistible subject for biographers. But their only daughter, born in 1926 at the height of her father’s early success, is probably the most reliable witness. And indeed, Frances Scott “Scottie” Fitzgerald was a vehement critic of biographers’ depictions which were invariably one dimensional.

It would be interesting to know what she would make of “Beautiful Little Fool”, the new musical by Mona Mansour (book) and Hannah Corneau (music and lyrics), which places Scottie centre stage, reflecting on her parents’ life from their first meeting up to their separate, sorrowful deaths. Scottie (Lauren Ward) is celebrating her forty-eighth birthday. She was always too young to sort out her parents’ lives, so now she is sorting out their archives. Mansour and Corneau have given her an easy task: what follows is a pretty simple potted history of the couple. Episodic and superficial. Interestingly, using a theatrical device that is sadly underexplored, Scottie periodically slips away from her narrative standpoint in the 1960’s to join them in the twenties and thirties and interact as an adult. Luckily, we are given the dates in the dialogue, as there is little else to evoke the time and setting. Corneau’s score reflects neither era, and pays little respect to the themes of Mansour’s script. ‘Nobody Parties Like Us’ opens the show, with the protagonists at mic stands wrestling with a pub-rock beat. By song number three, they seem to be stepping into a seventies power ballad – more Barry Manilow than Cab Calloway.

The dynamic lacks excitement and the band’s energy mirrors the unchanging pulse and pattern of the rhythms. Lyrically repetitive, they jar with the personalities singing them. But there is the crux – the characters themselves are under formed, merely scratching the surface of these multi-layered literary figures. Admittedly, the nature of musical theatre requires us to suspend our disbelief, but this is a real story about real people, and the belief comes crashing to the floor when a tortured genius of the jazz age reaches for the high belt.

The cast manage to rise above the material. Lauren Ward stands out as Scottie with an emotional and sensitive portrayal of a woman trying to make sense of her upbringing. The real-life Scottie had fewer complaints (“I didn’t consider it a difficult childhood at all. In fact, it was a wonderful childhood” she once remarked). David Hunter as F. Scott and Amy Parker as Zelda are in fine voice – particularly Parker who steps in as Zelda; usually played by composer and lyricist Corneau herself. There are moments when tensions run high and we get a very brief glimpse of the tempestuous relationship, but for the most part the emotional connection between F. Scott and Zelda is buried at the bottom of a whisky glass, topped with a dash of caricature and a twist of simplicity. We barely get a taste, and consequently learn little new.

Shankho Chaudhuri’s impressive, two-tiered set preserves the serious antiquity while still managing to recreate the party atmosphere when needed. But this concept doesn’t really transfer to the narrative. When we approach the twilight years, F. Scott has changed little. Hollywood broke him, but here we merely sense he is having a bad day at the office. The epilogue is drawn out, the emotional impact is cast out, and the sorrow and anguish is replaced by a sugary finale.

When Frances Scott “Scottie” Fitzgerald was born, Zelda emerged from the anaesthetic in a haze. “I’m drunk” she rambled, “Isn’t she smart… she has the hiccups. I hope it’s beautiful and a fool – a beautiful little fool”. These words reappeared later in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ spoken by Daisy Buchanan. It’s the perfect title for a retrospective play that mixes biography with drama, told through the eyes of the daughter. “Beautiful Little Fool”, however, squanders the opportunity with a show that barely removes the blinkers and further veils its potential for insight with a musical that skims the surface without revealing what lies beneath.

Tag Archives: Pamela Raith

MRS PRESIDENT

★★★

Charing Cross Theatre

MRS PRESIDENT

Charing Cross Theatre

★★★

“exciting and compelling to watch”

MRS PRESIDENT

Charing Cross Theatre

Reviewed on 27th January 2026

by Louise Sibley

Photography by Pamela Raith

MRS PRESIDENT

MRS PRESIDENT

MRS PRESIDENT

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOL

★★

Southwark Playhouse Borough

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOL

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★

“Lauren Ward stands out as Scottie with an emotional and sensitive portrayal”