Mrs President
Rating: ★★
Venue: Charing Cross Theatre, London
Cast: Miriam Grace Edwards and Sam Jenkins-Shaw

In Mrs President, Mary Lincoln is a woman at war—with her grief, her detractors, and herself. Vilified by an envious elite and accused of treason, she strives to rebuild her public image to win the hearts of the American people. She turns to the world’s first celebrity photographer, Matthew Brady, who helped her husband, Abraham Lincoln, win the presidency. But their partnership unravels into a tense battle for creative control. As Mary fights to tell her story, the play delves into themes of power, identity, female agency, and the cost of representation.

Redefining how modern society views and remembers a historical figure is always going to be an uphill climb, particularly a figure from as long ago as the 1800s, and it’s a task that John Ransom Philips’ play Mrs President aims to take on but unfortunately doesn’t quite deliver. 

Mary Lincoln is the subject of the play, the heavily criticised First Lady of President Abraham Lincoln until he was assassinated in 1865. Mary spent too much money too carelessly, she was a traitor with family connections to the South, and she was insane, even institutionalised by her son. You name it, she was probably accused of it. Meanwhile, her husband was revered as one of America’s greatest Presidents, emancipator of slaves and commander of respect. It is this contrast that Ransom Philips attempts to redefine in this piece, giving Mary more of a voice, though how successfully he manages to do so is questionable. 

This redefining of Mrs President (which Mary Lincoln repeatedly insists on being called) takes place primarily in the photography studio of Mr Matthew Brady, the man who made President Lincoln an infamous figure with his portraits, and the man Mary Lincoln believes can help her build bridges with the public. 

What follows is a power struggle between the two of them, with Mr Brady’s firm belief in his ability to shape society and define a figure with his photos, and Mary Lincoln’s repeated attempts to be in control of her public image and be defined as more than just a woman. She wants her real self to be seen, not hidden behind her husband, and Mr Brady is über-confident that he is the man for the job. 

With each portrait that Mr Brady takes, we are taken back to a defining moment in Mary Lincoln’s life, particularly some of the more challenging ones, like the loss of her son, Willie (although she lost three children and her husband throughout the course of her life). It felt as though there was scope for these moments to be explored further and in more detail, as we only scratch the surface of who Mrs President really was and the legacy she left behind. The passage of time between these moments was also sometimes difficult to follow, impacting the narrative and the audience’s ability to follow it. 

Despite this, Miriam Grace Edwards is excellent as Mrs President, conveying a powerful and emotional performance. Her counterpart Sam Jenkins-Shaw is equally as convincing as Mr Brady (and a host of other characters in the revisited moments of Mary’s life), and the two make for a formidable duo on stage. It is also worth mentioning the clever set design by Gregor Donnelly, with the stage sitting within a large photo frame, and a stripped back photography studio featuring a wooden chair and the camera itself. But it is Bronagh Lagan’s direction that left me occasionally confused, particularly during moments where the empty chair and camera came alive and talked to each other. This personification of two inanimate objects I found somewhat bizarre, and it did nothing to help move the storyline along. Perhaps used differently, it could have.

Overall, Mrs President feels like a play with interesting, but untapped, potential and a confused delivery. It feels as though Mary Lincoln is a character very much worth exploring, but the attempt to redefine her as more than just a woman and the property of her husband doesn’t quite get there. I’m not sure Mrs President’s identity is ever really separated from that of Mr President - leaving me wondering if this was indeed the point the play wants to make, in order to comment on the lack of women’s rights at the time. Or, if the play sought to redefine Mary and give her her own identity, I’m unsure if it ever quite executed this successfully.  

Without knowing much about Mrs Lincoln beforehand, I’m unsure how much more this play will teach you, as we don’t learn much more about her beyond a woman who suffered great loss and was heavily impacted by this grief. The play doesn’t give Mrs President the chance to develop her own personality and inject a sense of humour, which feels a shame. Despite this, the play certainly sparked my interest into researching Mary Lincoln further, which can only be a good thing.