Mrs President - Review

Review by Becky

Ticket was gifted in return for an honest review

Note: to more easily differentiate the historical, real-life people depicted in the play from those fictionalised (because they are fictionalised) characters, the characters will be referred to as “Mary Todd Lincoln” and “Mathew Brady”, while the real-life historical people are referred to as Mary Todd Lincoln and Mathew Brady. Because the distinction is important.
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“Mathew Brady” is self-obsessed with his own genius. The same affliction curses Mrs President. In the end, it’s their subjects who suffer.

Photo by Pamela Raith

Both are achievements, considering I walked to the Charing Cross Theatre from my job in Parliament, where self-professed geniuses who want to make or rewrite history are a dime a dozen.

The premise is simple: “Mary Todd Lincoln” (Settle, carrying the show on her back), wife of Abe, is in the photography studio of “Mathew Brady” (Hal Fowler), the man who took Lincoln’s famous portrait.  Together, they try to define her legacy through a photograph. At one point, there’s a séance. “Brady” disappears occasionally—in what I assume are manifestations of “Mary’s” bipolar—and reappears as figures from his myriad famous portraits.

And if you were to believe the theatre’s summary—“Mrs President opens at the Charing Cross Theatre in a newly reimagined version — the result of deep dramaturgical development and a creative workshop period in New York that uncovered bold new layers within the piece.”—you’d be expecting something a bit wild.

Mrs President is about as wild as seeing a bare ankle in 2026.

On the face of it, it’s intriguing, and psychoanalysing dead American icons is rather fashionable. But as my evening was swallowed by a rambling, confusing play allergic to timeline coherency, I found myself asking: okay, so what’s the point?

John Ramson Phillips, the playwright behind Mrs President, says its purpose is to give voice to a figure reviled in America for a love of excess. Mary Todd Lincoln’s spirit, he claims, came to him in the streets of New York. I don’t like to discount people’s experiences, so I’ll take him at his word.

Photo by Pamela Raith

The core problem, aside from the notion that Mary Todd Lincoln’s spirit would choose a man to define her legacy when men seem to be the crux of her problems, is that “Mary’s” voice doesn’t say anything of note. The whole thing feels like getting ChatGPT to summarise a Wikipedia entry and then chucking it at a creative team to try to find the nuggets of gold.

Like every misunderstood, shunned female historical figure, “Mary” wants to finally tell her own story. Huzzah, feminism! But it’s told so quickly and abstractly that if you know nothing about the Lincolns, you’ve spent 90 minutes trying to determine if the issue is the play or you.

Multiple times, “Brady” claims to be able to make the dead look alive again. It doesn’t work as verbal CPR for Mrs President.

It’s like PMQs, where you want someone on the backbenches to stand up and go, “For Christ’s sake, get to the point!”

Settle is gorgeous in this play. She makes the most of a script that demands screaming, crying, and tortured facial expressions, and she commits 100% to it. But she deserves better material.

Fowler is inoffensive and does well in the supporting role. He is not flattered by movement direction reminiscent of GCSE Dance choreography, but he gets through it. Confusingly, his Chief Justice character seemed to have more to it than “Brady” did—I half-wonder if he was given more autonomy for the side characters.

Overall, the costumes are historically minded. The projections of “Brady’s” photographs of “Mary” are effective. It’s difficult to heavily criticise Bronagh Lagan’s direction when the material is doing so much of the damage, but I am curious about why “Brady” was doing his best Victor Frankenstein impression.

The conceit of the stage being surrounded by a picture frame is clever and the most self-aware part of the production. “You are,” it seems to say, “watching an imperfect version of history. Because art is an interpretation of reality, not a replication.”

If it could share that insight with the rest of the production (and its writer), that’d be great. Mrs President tries to deal in too many absolutes for its own good and adequately conveys few of them.

Photo by Pamela Raith

Another issue is that it is infuriatingly difficult to empathise with a character you don’t know. The change in “Mary” isn’t pronounced enough from beginning to end to make the vignettes of her life feel like anything other than reliving, rather than transformational.

If anything, “Brady” just grows ruder as the whole thing goes on, which might be the point. But when you’re going around in circles, having the same argument four or five times, your patience does wear thin.

So, as I sit here trying to find words that do justice to the sheer confusion in my mind, I think the simplest way to explain my feelings about Mrs President is this:

Fowler’s “Brady” is to Settle’s “Mary” what Mrs President is to Mary Todd Lincoln: art from men who claim to have the answers. They’re the ones who define legacy, greatness, and believe they’re the key to a woman’s public relations issues. 99% of the time, they’re wrong.

All of which culminates in a self-obsessed play that claims to speak for the dead. Instead, we should focus our energy on letting Mary Todd Lincoln finally rest in peace.

Will the “artists” listen? I doubt it. We might be having the same conversation in 2027, after this play is dragged through another workshop that seems to make little positive progress.

⭐⭐

Mrs President runs at the Charing Cross Theatre until Sunday 8th March 2026. Tickets are available from https://charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/theatre/mrs-president-2026

Photo by Pamela Raith