FringeReview UK 2026

Our American Queen

the american vicarious

Genre: American Theater, Biographical Drama, Drama, New Writing, Political, Theatre

Venue: Bridewell Theatre

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

“Sometimes she understands things better than I. ” With Kate behind you, how can you fail? That’s what her father thinks. It’s what Union America suspects. Thomas Klingenstein’s Our American Queen premieres at Bridewell Theatre directed for the american vicarious company till February 7 by Christopher McElroen.

Our American Queen is set in a closely-researched 1862, running at a steady pace for 150 minutes on this occasion without a break. It centres on the daughter of Secretary of the Treasury and (yet again) presidential hopeful, abolitionist Salmon Chase (Darrell Brockis). A man who not only wanted Black soldiers to fight for the Union but on equal pay, unlike the over-cautious Lincoln. And the one person capable of steering the country’s finances, not helped by Mrs Lincoln and her curious gardener-brokered affairs.

The more acutely political Kate Chase (Wallis Currie-Wood), accorded the eponymous title by newspapers, has a choice to make. She’s regarded as First Lady in waiting to her thrice-widowed father; who however, is eyeing up a fourth, the charming, sexually available Mrs (Carlotta) Eastman (Christy Meyer), much to Kate’s disapproval. After all Eastman writes to Chase in French. Yet movingly it’s Eastman who has Kate’s best interests, and is prepared to sacrifice her own for them if need be.

Meyer’s alertness and warmth propels Mrs Eastman from beguiling (“you didn’t come to me last night.. I left the garter”) through her imaginary or real encounters with the ghosts of the Washingtons in an understated lyric flight; to Kate saying for very different reasons “she’s not the person I thought she was.”

Kate enters presented with a box of live terrapins to eat, which gratifyingly she releases into the gardens. Kate, political fixer of dinner parties to get Senator Wade onside for a challenge to the 1864 election, thinks dinners can survive a lack of terrapins. In every way Chase, indeed Washington accepts Kate’s a sharper political operator. Currie-Wood exudes both a slightly repressed daughter and a forthright regal fixer, blunt in her sallies with Brockis’s liberal-seeming but imperious Salmon. Brockis burrs like Bourbon but snarls when riled: both he and Currie-Wood pulse with fury, the latter icy. Paradoxically in his own public and political sphere Kate challenges her father and gets her way. But in her own private life Kate absorbs her father’s wishes. There’s an aching irony to all this. Currie-Wood conveys and finally with a literally sweeping gesture expresses Kate’s frustrations.

Kate’s set up to marry dodgy philandering magnate Thomas Sprague; for her father’s sake. It’s clear seemingly-urbane Salmon has and continues to take Kate for granted. Simmering resentment at her banishment for ten years from his life, (she’s only 22 at this moment) till she revealed herself as useful, turns on his continually forgetting her birthday. Kate’s flaw is a certain love of luxury, of beautiful things. A dress, a tiara. Sprague can and does provide, but part of her is already repelled. Eastman’s warning is chiselled: “A man who spends his days compromising is inclined to spend his nights dictating. A democrat by day, a tyrant by night.”

The detail dazzles but the points are well-made, cumulative and thoroughly entertaining. “There has never been a better Secretary of the Treasury.” “Might Alexander Hamilton be in the running? “ her father ripostes with a knowing wink to the audience. Of British “ambassador” Lyons Chase reminds us “He is a minister not an ambassador… The English don’t deign to have an embassy in America…. the English only abolished slavery to make it that much easier to taunt us for our hypocrisy.” One can imagine Gore Vidal, a writer (and once dramatist) of a different political hue, would have delighted in this.

Enter poet and Lincoln secretary John Hay (an elegant, watchful Tom Victor) who gently challenges Kate. It reveals sidelights on the subtle tyrannies Chase exerts: ‘“He thinks I decorate as suits my fancy; whereas in fact I am concerned only to satisfy his taste. I try to do it as she would have.” (Referring to the portrait of Chase’s first wife).’ That isn’t even Kate’s mother but who she was named after. Kate even has to change her own bedroom décor for him. And not read the “scandalous” Whitman Hay has sent her. But Hay too has absorbed his father’s disapproval of his poetry. It leads to his self-flagellation: “If a poet marries at all it should not be before he has made his fortune.” Ouch.

It’s piquant that Chase has exerted a Mrs Haversham tole in Kate’s life, but this is brought out by eager discussions of books Kate and Hay bond over. For instance Kate’s delicious dismissal of Balzac: “too much starting and stopping.” If Hay doesn’t like Silas Marner, they adore Great Expectations, then being serialised. Kate thinks it too dark. Hay ripostes “But your eyes adjust because Dickens never changes the light.“ British fiction still dominates. It’s clear parallels between them through Pip and Estrella are brought delicately into play as both novel and play progress – and later discussion over the different endings that Hay’s informed of.

British novels but American poetry, not least Hay’s own (Hay was a celebrated poet in his day, as well as a later diplomat) but most of all Whitman. Victor’s Hay too is shy of professing his clear love for Kate. The aching manner in which they circle each other becomes the play’s nub, as historical events play out beyond, but which envelop them too.  Kate is infuriated by how close Hay’s literary allusions come to feeling, when Hay quotes explicit language of Whitman.

General McClellan (Haydn Hoskins) has least to do, with just two major scenes, the most important with Kate, which makes him partially redundant dramatically. The still-youthful McClelland is ably embodied in the way Hoskins impresses him as a force, and frazzles as a man. McClellan, the great Union army trainer was already notorious for taking Scipio-like evasion tactics to a new level. After the opening Bull Run skirmish of 1861 he shied off any major battle. Kate charges him with this (a quip not included here has Lincoln ask McClelland if he can borrow his army for a bit, since McClelland is doing nothing with it). He bolsters Kate’s allure as a second suitor Kate once kissed impulsively.

Neal Wilkinson’s set design consists of a long table presented head-on, with chairs and naturalistic ornaments including clumps of flowers. With exquisite costume design by Elivia Bovenzi Blitz, modelled on photographs of Kate Chase, and the new chemical shade of mauve.

What dominates visually are two things: a lighting and video design from Beril Yavuz. A large portrait of Salmon Chase’s first wife Kate (not Kate’s mother – who was second of three) which dissolves to Civil War images and at some remarkable moments acts as a mirror to protagonists on stage: even when the protagonist faces downstage. Camilo Tirado’s sound riffs on faintly-heard period or post-period music: wisps of Dvorak and MacDowell, and Stephen Foster.

In 2017 McElroen helmed Klingenstein’s best-known work, If Only… A Love Story, which like this play revolves around Abraham Lincoln, again offstage and again presented wars, as it were, and all. That work, set in 1901, is a what-if, where Lincoln brings together his former Black valet Samuel Johnson and Ann Astorcott. Real people who might have got together if Lincoln had lived. The world and its values round Lincoln seems a vital part of Klingenstein’s imaginary.

Though Dickens and his plot are invoked, it’s Henry James that seeps from Our American Queen. A dramatic James, with short interchanges as well as speeches. It’s sovereign writing: durable, pointed, witty and worth savouring as a text when not on stage. There’s much in these real-life characters to make you grateful for Klingenstein’s attentive, above all brilliant re-imagining of two remarkable young people; and three others worth knowing. The core dance of the “Cat” (Kate) and “Mouse” as they recognise their love is poignant. Hay alone catches Kate’s vulnerability; she scratches fiery retorts. Currie-Wood is riveting and a little heart-rending, Victor eloquent in holding off. Yet there’s a final epiphany where words are uttered. In a way. Exceptional, and it’s to proceed to Wilton Hall in tandem with Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley, Klingenstein’s verbatim play which precedes it on 3-7 February.

Producing Director Erica Laird, Marketing Manager Dannah Kelly, Stage Manager Patrick Shiels, DSM Sophie Gill, ASM Andra Ciobotaru, Production Manager Josh Collins, Wardrobe Manager Zoe Brown, Lighting Operators Emma Langen & James Brian White, Marketing & Publicity Mobius, Casting Peter Noden Casting.

Special thanks to John Rankin and the staff at the Bridewell Theatre, Hannah Myers at Stone nest and Robin Weaver.

Published January 15, 2026January 16, 2026 by Simon Jenner