the american vicarious

OUR AMERICAN QUEEN

by Thomas Klingenstein | directed by Christopher McElroen

Running time: Approximately 90 minutes, no intermission

the american vicarious, the internationally acclaimed creative producers behind Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley and Fight for America!, return to London with the UK premiere of Our American Queen — a new work exploring the life and legacy of Kate Chase, one of the most celebrated yet overlooked women of 19th-century America.

Set against the 1864 U.S. presidential election, the play follows Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, as he dares to challenge the president for the nation’s highest office. At the centre stands his daughter, Kate Chase — brilliant, ambitious, and hailed by the press as “Our American Queen.” Torn between love and power, Kate must choose between her devotion to Lincoln’s secretary John Hay and a marriage that could secure her father’s political future in a nation on the brink.

At once intimate and sweeping, Our American Queen explores the price of ambition, the fragility of reputation, and the timeless struggle of women to claim power in a world unwilling to grant it.