Onward Victoria

Onward Victoria is a musical (1980) with a book and lyrics by Charlotte Anker and Irene Rosenberg, and music by Keith Herrmann.

Onward Victoria
Music	Keith Herrmann
Lyrics	Charlotte Anker Irene Rosenberg
Book	Charlotte Anker Irene Rosenberg
Basis	Life of Victoria Woodhull
Productions	1980 Broadway

Its subject is Victoria Woodhull, the 19th-century woman who with her sister were the first women to operate a brokerage firm, at which they became millionaires; and started a newspaper. Woodhull was a proponent for free love and activist for equality of the sexes. Its cast of characters includes Cornelius Vanderbilt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, restaurateur Charlie Delmonico, and Henry Ward Beecher, with whom Woodhull is linked in a fictional romance that leads to the minister being tried for alienation of affections.

This musical originated in 1979 as Unescorted Women, first produced off-off-Broadway by the Joseph Jefferson Theatre Company. With its budget sets and costumes, anachronistic pop score, and camp burlesque-style production numbers (including one in which Woodhull sang the praises of Beecher's physical endowment) intact, headed uptown the following year rechristened Onward Victoria.

After twenty-three previews - and with its closing notice already in place - the Broadway production, directed by Julianne Boyd and choreographed by Michael Shawn, opened on December 14, 1980 at the Martin Beck Theatre, where it ran for one performance. The cast included Jill Eikenberry as Woodhull, Michael Zaslow as Beecher, Ted Thurston as Vanderbilt, Laura Waterbury as Stanton, Dorothy Holland as Anthony, Gordon Stanley as Fleming, and Lenny Wolpe as Delmonico.

Theoni V. Aldredge was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design. A Broadway cast recording was released by Original Cast Records.

Musical Numbers

Act I Scene 1: Opening - New York City, 1871 "The Age of Brass" - Victoria, Tennie, Henry, Beecher, Anthony Comstock, Theodore and Beth Tilton, Elizabeth Cady Standtion, Susan B. Anthony, Ensemble Scene 2: Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt's Office "Magnetic Healing" - Victoria, Tennie, Cornelius Vanderbilt Scene 3: Victoria's Salon - Six Months Later "Curiosity" - William Evarts, Beth and Theodore Tilton, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Cornelius Vanderbill, Ensemble Scene 4: Plymouth Church, Brooklyn Heights "Beecher's Processional" - Beecher, Congregation Scene 5: Woodhull and Clafin's Brokerage "I Depend on You" - Victoria and Tennie Scene 6: Washington, D.C., Congress - May 24, 1871 Scene 7: Victoria's Campaign Tour "Victoria's Banner" - Victoria, Tennie, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Ensemble "Changes" - Victoria Scene 8: Beecher's Study - The Next Day Scene 9: Victoria's Brokerage/Beecher's Study - Three Months Later "A Taste of Forever" - Victoria, Theodore Tilton Scene 10: Delmonico's Restaurant - Two Hours Later "Unescorted Women" - Charlie Delmonico, Tennie, Victoria, Ensemble

Act II Scene 1: Victoria's Brokerage - The Next Day "Love and Joy" - Victoria, Henry Beecher Scene 2: Beecher's Study - Two Months Later "Everyday I Do a Little Something for the Lord" - Comstock "It's Easy for Her" - Beecher Scene 3: Victoria's Brokerage - Early Evening Scene 4: Steinway Hall "You Cannot Drown the Dreamer" - Victoria, Elizabeth Scene 5: Victoria's Brokerage - Two Days Later "Respectable" - Tennie "Another Life" - Victoria Scene 6: Brokerage/Street/Jail "Read It in The Weekly" - Victoria, Henry Beecher, Theodore Tilton, Tennie, Anthony Comstock, Newsboys, Readers Scene 7: Exterior and Interior of Courtroom - Six Months Later "A Valentine for Beecher" - Ensemble "Beecher's Defense" - Victoria "Another Life (Reprise)" - Victoria, Henry Beecher "You Cannot Drown the Dreamer (Reprise)" - Victoria, Tennie

References

Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum, published by St. Martin's Press (1991), pages 240-41 (ISBN 0-312-06428-4)

External links

• Onward Victoria at the Internet Broadway Database