Actor Hal Fowler told David Hennessy about playing the Irish born father of modern photojournalism Matthew Brady in Mrs President.
Hal Fowler is set to star opposite musical theatre icon and Broadway star Keala Settle (The Greatest Showman, Waitress, Sister Act) in Mrs President when it comes to Charing Cross Theatre this month.
Hal Fowler’s stage credits include Les Miserables, Aspects of Love and Flowers for Mrs Harris which was also directed by Northern Irish director Bronagh Lagan who is also at the helm of this production.
Hal Fowler was cast in The Who’s original rock musical Tommy. It was on that project that he met Kim Wilde and the pair would go on to marry although they have divorced in recent years.
He has also starred in numerous West End shows and his screen credits include Solo: A Star Wars Story.
In Mrs President, he plays Mathew Brady, the Irish born forefather of photojournalism and also one of the earliest celebrity/portraiture photographers in American history.
The play is described as a psychological drama that uncovers the turbulent inner world and the passions and ambitions of Mary Lincoln, America’s First Lady played by Settle.
Set in the aftermath of 1865 and following the assassination of her husband, Mary is a woman under siege, suffering from immense grief and struggling with her mental health.
She was vilified by society and in the media for her natural and very human behaviour after the killing of her husband President Abraham Lincoln and the play says something about the portrayal of females particularly females in high positions.
She seeks out Brady to help her redefine her public image, a mission which ultimately results in a journey of self-discovery.
Brady’s photography documented the American Civil War and showed the realities of warfare for the first time, including images of dead bodies rather than romanticised artists’ impressions.
He later carried out a series of formal portraits of significant figures such as Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S Grant.
However in spite of his success and acclaim he died almost penniless in 1896.
His origins are mysterious but in official documents before the Civil War, including census returns, Brady stipulated that he had been born in Ireland and he is usually associated with Co Cavan.
There is a possibility that he later reinvented himself as having been born in the United States due to anti-Irish sentiment in America at the time.
Hal took some time out of rehearsals to chat to The Irish World.
How are rehearsals going?
“It’s really exciting because it’s such a psychological pas de deux with Mary Todd Lincoln and Matthew Brady at its heart.
“They’re locked in this power play, battle of image and identity.
“That’s really exciting to play out in a rehearsal room with just two of you.
“There’s something really exciting about being in the rehearsal room with a small group of people and exploring a piece that has so much of history in it, to just let yourself dive into that creative process to see what you come up with.
“Even this morning we’ve been just exploring ideas and as there’s new ideas, you can just get on your feet and try something and that often doesn’t happen in a lot of rehearsal rooms on a big show that’s been on for years.
“You can get, ‘Well, you move to that point and now you move there, and then you pick up the jug and you walk off’.
“So there’s a real excitement and it goes back to what drew me into being an actor in the first place which is to explore a world which, although is a couple of hundred years ago or nearly a couple hundred years ago, feels like it’s today or yesterday.
“We don’t seem to learn any lessons or if we do, we forget them very quickly.”
How would you describe the play in one line?
“It’s a play about what happens when public myth collapses and the private self has nowhere left to hide.”
What was it about the part that attracted you?
“I’ve worked with Bronagh before and greatly enjoyed that process so I was really excited when she said to me, ‘I’ve got this piece coming up which I think you might be a good fit for it. I’ll send you the script’.
“And then when the script arrived I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to really take the time to sit myself down’.
“I said, ‘Just let me really look at this piece and see if I can take it in’.
“I sat down and read it out loud and before I knew it, I’d got to the end because it’s so rich and the power play at its heart really is this, ‘Who gets to decide who people are? Who gets to say?’
“It’s about a high profile woman who is portrayed by lots of other people, mostly men.
“Mary Todd Lincoln has been written about a lot more than she was ever listened to.
“And that story is prevalent probably throughout history and just as much so today.
“I thought, ‘I really have to do this’.
“Mary Todd Lincoln did have several portraits taken by Matthew Brady and this is an imagining of another time when she goes to have a portrait taken.
“Brady was a real pioneer in terms of photography.
“He really shaped how subjects wished to be seen and then decided to also shape subjects how he thought they should be seen.
“It’s difficult for us to imagine what it was like at a time when photographs weren’t readily available because they’re part of our every day.
“His photographs of the Civil War were something completely new, certainly to an American audience and for the first time, they were seeing dead bodies and people were horrified by this.
“People understood for the first time what war meant.
“But it’s quite well reported that Brady thought it fine that he would rearrange some of those bodies for the photograph he wanted to take.
“This play is almost a man who constructed public images who meets a woman who’s trapped inside of one.
“Her life was full of tragedy and grief and loss and and madness, if we can use that word. Madness and insanity were certainly the words that were used in the day.
“That night that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, shot in the back while she was sitting next to him, she was covered in his blood.
“He didn’t die straight away and he was taken to a room and I believe in that room there were lots of other men.
“And she- rightfully so, as someone who’d been married for over 20 years and supported her husband through his presidency and pre-that- was obviously in utter shock and grief, wailing on her knees next to his dying body.
“Her behaviour was seen as unfit.
“She was dragged away and then was not there for the death of her husband.
“There’s something so extraordinarily cruel and awful about that and this play really gives Mary Todd Lincoln a chance to fight back against these definitions that have made her.”
She was really vilified for no reason, wasn’t she?
“She was and she was mocked and the laughing stock.
“It’s so commonplace especially, sadly, for women in positions of high positions and it’s normally all done by men.
“What’s interesting about the play in the way that John Ransom Philips has written it is that it doesn’t ever try to soften her.
“What it does is it allows her grief and her madness and her anger to sort of coexist within the play and for her to find strength in that.”
Is something Mary and Matthew had in common their proximity to real horror with Mary being beside her assassinated husband although Matthew did make it his trade?
“He was a showman and, as it turned out, his attempt to have this enormous exhibition of the Civil War pretty much bankrupted him in the end because he had a whole host photographers going out to take pictures and he had over stretched himself.
“It made him bankrupt because he couldn’t pay his bills despite all this but anyone that does really well, there’s only one way to go eventually, isn’t there?
“Certainly in our play, it’s the idea that perhaps where he’s got to in his life and where he’s got to in his career, that the idea of capturing an image of Mary Lincoln, especially with all the falsities that have been bestowed on her- If he can get the picture showing all of that and all of her grief and all her anger, it wouldn’t be a good photograph for Mary Lincoln but it would be a great photograph for him.
“Journalists love to show pictures of people in awful situations having a terrible time and as a public, the voyeurs that we’ve turned into, we love to see the horror of stuff.”
Does the play say something about our modern very polarised times often seeing real horror unfolding in rolling news coverage?
“I think absolutely and we never know what the truth is but hoping that the audience would come away with a renewed understanding of Mary Lincoln not as a caricature but as a fully human figure and also coming away with being much more aware of how images shape belief, memory and power.
“There will be images that we’ve brought with us from childhood, important images we’ve seen in newspapers and on televisions that stick with us for generations but it’s only what we’ve been told, what we’ve been shown in the picture and our everyday is shaped like that.
“We don’t know what the narrative really is, do we?
“But Brady, of course, was the father of all this stuff and that’s what’s really fascinating.
“In his mind I think he wasn’t capturing history, he was creating it.
“But not just creating it but creating it in a way he wanted others to see it.
“She says, ‘I don’t want my photograph to be like any of your other photographs. I want this to be different’.
“And he says, ‘Well, I make ordinary people extraordinary. In my hands a soldier, just a farmer’s boy dead in the mud, becomes a glorious hero’.
“The play really explores image, identity as Brady manipulates Mary Todd Lincoln to remember things that has happened to her in her life so he can draw the grief and memory back out of her, hoping that he can get a picture of her that will be sensational.
“He also becomes three other characters, the first character being John James Audubon who was the famous French bird artist. He, in himself, was a fascinating character not necessarily for good reasons.
“When he was hoping to get a big investment, he was inventing birds and drawing pictures of birds that didn’t exist in order that he could show people and say, ‘Look, I found this and I need some more money’.
“Brady becomes the bird artist in order that he can manipulate Mary Todd Lincoln even more by thinking which he used.
“He famously used to break the wings of the birds in order to get the pictures of them.
“The pictures are beautiful but our play explores what’s had to happen in order for them to be beautiful is that there would be a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, certainly for the animal.
“Then he becomes Roger B Taney, the Chief Justice, who was a particularly unlikeable character really.
“He was responsible for the Dred Scott ruling which was to deny black people the right to be American citizens which meant you couldn’t sue.
“And then he also goes on to become John Brown, the abolitionist.
“These are just for short moments but all of it is to try and lead Mary Todd Lincoln down this path for this sensationalist picture that he hopes to be able to get of her.
“And he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with that even though it’s causing her great suffering.
“We see the grief coming back to her and we see her memories and also see her joy of being a mother and being a wife so there’s lots of moments of joy as well.
“I won’t give too many spoilers for what the final act of defiance for Mary Todd Lincoln is, but she certainly breaks through and gets to redefine herself in the end.”
Does Matthew’s motives change from trying to manipulate her to wanting to give her ‘glory’ like those on the battlefield that he photographed?
“I think more what the play deals with is what he thinks is glory is very different to what she thinks is glory.
“Obviously he’s an expert in the dark room.
“He takes pictures that he thinks are brilliant and on the wall in his studio, there’s all these pictures of President Lincoln, of General Grant, Walt Whitman, all those illustrious Americans so people have come to him.
“I think he had this belief that what he did was the best so why should anyone not trust his judgment?
“And perhaps Mary’s the first person that comes into his studio and says, ‘Well, that’s not me, that’s you. I see you in this picture’.
“He says, ‘Well, of course you see me because I’m the puppet master. I decide what gets to be seen’, and so as a photograph is rejected, he has to then come up with another plan but each time he comes up with another plan, it seems to get darker and darker from his point of view.
“And of course that gives her something really to fight back against and there’s some absolutely beautiful speeches that Mary has.
“Keala Settle’s just wonderful to work with, she’s just great, so engaging and there’s some beautiful speeches where she remembers being in the apple orchard with her children and describing nights with her husband.
“We go from this beautiful just very ordinary mother, wife description of her life to then these much more difficult moments.
“It all takes place in Brady’s studio but that studio also becomes the White House, it becomes the theatre where Abraham Lincoln was shot, it becomes the apple orchard so what seems just like a two hander, there’s many times when it feels like a much bigger piece.”
You say identity is a big thing in the play. It was for Matthew Brady as well wasn’t it in that while it’s said he was born in Ireland, he seemed to also distance himself from that..
“He often offered up that he was born in Ireland although apparently there is no definitive documentation about that.
“But later on in life, he said he was born in New York.
“Obviously his parents had emigrated to the United States but what’s interesting about his desire to change or in recounting a different story says a lot about possibly what it was to be the son of Irish immigrants to the United States during the 19th century.
“He was obviously quite happy to reinvent himself while he was trying to reinvent everybody else.
“As soon as it starts, there’s a man who likes to think he defines the world in a studio with one of the most famous women of the time who comes in looking to be defined.
“And within moments, they’re both locked in.
“She needs a new image which will redefine her and he believes he knows what that image is.
“And straight from the get go, there’s the tension because they’re on very, very different pages so then the power struggle comes about.”
Mrs President is at Charing Cross Theatre 23 January- 8 March.
For tickets and more information, click here.
