Mary Lincoln, wife of the 16th president of the United States, has rarely had a good press. As first lady she was criticised for her extravagance, pilloried for her attention-seeking, and even accused of being a traitor. Her son Robert had her committed to a mental institution following her husband Abraham’s assassination. Many historians have portrayed her as an intemperate, even violent figure.
John Ransom Phillips questions this depiction in his new play, which imagines Lincoln on her visits to Mathew Brady, the famous American photographer who took the portraits by which she is most recognised today. There’s an instant clash of egos between the regal Lincoln, taking up literal space in her vast hooped dress, and Brady, pursuing his own tyrannical artistic vision. “I shape the image of the people who shape America,” he cries, with mad scientist energy. “So I am shaping America!”
Miriam Grace Edwards brings great emotional range to the first lady, whose many tragedies – losing two infant sons, witnessing her husband’s murder – render her a sympathetic figure. Scenes follow each other in phantasmagorical fashion, with a game Sam Jenkins-Shaw metamorphosing between Brady and his photographic subjects, from naturalist John James Audubon to revolutionary martyr John Brown.
The principals largely talk at, rather than to, each other, offering more of a conceptual framework than a central narrative. It’s never quite clear where the action is taking place – in Brady’s imagination? One of Lincoln’s psychotic episodes? – and the bursts of biographical information that explode at regular intervals are entertaining but rarely illuminating.
Designer Gregor Donnelly does some neat work with a magically appearing darkroom and flashbulb renderings of the portraits themselves. But Bronagh Lagan’s direction is awkwardly undermined by scenes where the stage is empty except for a chair and camera tripod, which talk to each other in a manner you might see midway through a Disney ride.
“I cannot be remembered this way,” Lincoln cries at one point. Unfortunately she’s right: this overworked thematic treatment, of who gets to define how we’re seen, obscures a more interesting glimpse of the first lady herself.
At Charing Cross theatre, London, until 16 March
