A focused look at Mary Todd Lincoln, Mrs President, is currently playing at Charing Cross Theatre. Advertising promises an “intimate and politically charged portrait of America’s most misunderstood First Lady” but unfortunately this is a show which is also hard to understand due to narrative jumps and other authorial (John Ransom Phillips) and directorial (Bronagh Lagan) choices.
The interplay between Mary Lincoln (Miriam Grace Edwards) and photographer of the day Mathew Brady (Sam Jenkins-Shaw) seems a good vehicle for Lincoln to bare her soul and reclaim her reputation away from someone mad and extravagant. However, everything portrayed seems to confirm this reputation. Flashbacks to other scenes (ably played by Jenkins-Shaw) were presented as manic hallucinations. There was an excruciating amount of detail about her son as an apple and a large focus on spending on feasts and whale bone corsets.
Lincoln repeatedly says that she “cannot be remembered this way”, but we are provided little else to remember her by. There is no hint of outside interests or passions except for an apple pie with four different apples.
I was absolutely bamboozled by what the talking furniture was supposed to add to the story. Was this just for the audience or again another hint at mental incapacity? Was the fact that the chair had once been an Irish tree significant? Why should we care that the camera was having an existential crisis? This never became clear.
The set (Gregor Donnelly) and lighting (Derek Anderson) are a strength and especially effective as a photo is taken – flash! – and then the image revealed.
There is a story waiting to be told here but unfortunately the play in its current form is not an effective vehicle to tell it.
Red Bus Londinium Life 
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