| | Author: | Linda Rimel | | EMail: | rhymeswithprimal@juno.com | | ICWP Member?: | No | | Nearest Large City: | Portland, OR | | Country: | USA | | Play Title: | Victoria Who? | | Runtime: | 91-120 minutes | | Synopsis: |
In 1857, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the most popular minister in America, auctions a pretty female slave out of slavery during a worship service in Brooklyn
In 1871, Victoria Woodhull, about to address a Congressional committee--the first woman ever to do so--overhears a man reprimand the Reverend Beecher's sister for casting aspersions on Vicky's reputation. The man says that the Reverend Beecher preaches to twenty of his mistresses every Sunday morning. Vicky's speech succeeds; the suffragists sweep her to their convention, where she announces her candidacy to be “Presidentess of the United States,” takes over, and is gaveled into silence by Susan B. Anthony. Susan B. Anthony then has the lights doused. From the blackened auditorium, Vicky's sister Tennie calls, “Vicky? Victoria?”
“Victoria who?” snorts Susan B. Anthony. In flashback, Vicky grows up poor; her father, who sells snake oil, marries her off young. Her second husband educates her on Free Love.
Just when Vicky has won over the respectable suffragists, her family drags her into court, airing dirty laundry about attempted poisonings, illiteracy, fortunetelling, blackmail schemes, orgies, her sister's affair with Commodore Vanderbilt, and the fact that Vicky lives with both her husbands.
Vicky and Tennie defy convention, running a newspaper and a stock brokerage, and insisting on being served in a restaurant even though no gentleman accompanies them. Vicky lectures on Free Love and another sister, drunk, heckles her. Vicky hints at the Beecher scandal and meets and beds the minister the Reverend Beecher sends to placate her. When the Reverend Beeecher himself tries to placate Vicky, she beds him also, and exhorts him to champion publicly the Free Love doctrine that he practices privately. He panics. Vicky exposes the Beecher scandal in her newspaper and goes to jail.
Not wanting Vicky and clan to testify in court, one of Vanderbilt's heirs pays them to move to England. Vicky and Tennie marry rich men but society snubs them. Vicky wants her obituary to vindicate her, but Lindbergh's landing in Paris—is that his aeroplane she hears—will knock her out of the headlines and the history books.
Copyright (c) Linda Rimel 2008 | | Male: | 12 | | Female: | 9 | | Max. Cast: | 50 | | Min. Cast: | 24 | | Media: | Musical | | Genre: | Drama | | Theme: | Historical, feminism | | Web Page: | | | First Name: | Linda | | Last Name: | Rimel | | Notes: | |
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