VIOLET is a multi award-winning musical based on the short story The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betts. Music by Jeanine Tesori (Tony Award winner for Best Original Score with Lisa Kron for the musical Fun Home, and Tony nominated scores for Caroline, Or Change, Shrek The Musical and Thoroughly Modern Millie), Book & Lyrics by Brian Crawley. VIOLET premiered Off-Broadway and won the Drama Critics' Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award as Best Musical, before a Broadway revival where it was nominated for four Tony Awards. This is the UK premiere.

1964. Somewhere between North Carolina and Oklahoma, we find Violet, a young woman who hopes her life savings will bring her a miracle halfway across the country. Reflecting on her childhood, and shaped by the reactions of the people she encounters, Violet embarks on a life-changing personal journey.

Creative team: Director Shuntaro Fujita, Choreographer Cressida Carré, Set Design Morgan Large, Costume Jonathan Lipman, Lighting Howard Hudson, Sound Andrew Johnson, Music Director Dan Jackson, Associate Music Director Chris Ma, Production Supervisor Thom Southerland

Casting: Kaisa Hammarlund as Violet, Matthew Harvey as Monty, Jay Marsh as Flick, Simbi Akande, Angelica Allen, Kenneth Avery-Clark, Keiron Crook, James Gant, Danny Michaels, Janet Mooney, with Amy Mepham, Rebecca Nardin and Madeleine Sellman as Young Violet

Producers: Steven M Levy and Vaughan Williams for Charing Cross Theatre Productions Limited, in a co-production with Umeda Arts Theatre Co Ltd, Osaka, Japan

• Mainstage

Mrs President

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Art Pond Foundation presents

MRS PRESIDENT

Written by John Ransom Phillips

Directed by Bronagh Lagan

Keala Settle is Mrs President.

Mary Lincoln is a woman under siege — with her grief, her detractors, and herself. In the shadow of her late husband, President Abraham Lincoln, she battles a world eager to define her and a conscience that will not rest. Accused of treason and shunned by society, she turns to Mathew Brady, the world’s first celebrity photographer — played by Hal Fowler (Les Miserables, Aspects of Love, Flowers for Mrs Harris) — to help her reclaim her story. But as the lens turns between them, the power shifts, and their collaboration spirals into a fierce struggle for authorship, truth, and control.

Following its original staging in 2025, 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.

This is not a remount, but a reinvention — richer in scope, sharper in focus, and more hauntingly human.

Re-envisioned under the direction of Bronagh Lagan (Cruise, Broken Wings) and written by artist, playwright, and historian John Ransom Phillips, the production features Broadway musical theatre star Keala Settle (The Greatest Showman, Waitress, Les Miserables) in a rare non-singing dramatic role that showcases her extraordinary depth and power.

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