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

Production

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. A Broadway cast recording was released by Original Cast Records.

Cast

The cast included Jill Eikenberry as Woodhull, Michael Zaslow as Henry Ward Beecher, with whom Woodhull is linked in a fictional romance that leads to the minister being tried for alienation of affections, Ted Thurston as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Laura Waterbury as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Dorothy Holland as Susan B. Anthony, Gordon Stanley as Fleming, and Lenny Wolpe as restaurateur Charlie Delmonico.

Awards

Theoni V. Aldredge was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design.

Musical Numbers

Scene 1: Opening - New York City, 1871 Scene 2: Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt's Office Scene 3: Victoria's Salon - Six Months Later Scene 4: Plymouth Church, Brooklyn Heights Scene 5: Woodhull and Clafin's Brokerage Scene 6: Washington, D.C., Congress - May 24, 1871 Scene 7: Victoria's Campaign Tour Scene 8: Beecher's Study - The Next Day Scene 9: Victoria's Brokerage/Beecher's Study - Three Months Later Scene 10: Delmonico's Restaurant - Two Hours Later Scene 1: Victoria's Brokerage - The Next Day Scene 2: Beecher's Study - Two Months Later Scene 3: Victoria's Brokerage - Early Evening Scene 4: Steinway Hall Scene 5: Victoria's Brokerage - Two Days Later Scene 6: Brokerage/Street/Jail Scene 7: Exterior and Interior of Courtroom - Six Months Later