Onward Victoria is a musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

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

Its subject is Victoria Woodhull

Victoria Woodhull

Victoria Claflin Woodhull was an American leader of the woman's suffrage movement, an advocate of free love; together with her sister, the first women to operate a brokerage in Wall Street; the first women to start a weekly newspaper; an activist for women's rights and labor reforms and, in 1872,...

, the 19th-century woman who with her sister were the first women to operate a brokerage firm, at which they became millionaire

Millionaire

A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. It can also be a person who owns one million units of currency in a bank account or savings account...

s; 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

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Cornelius Vanderbilt , also known by the sobriquet Commodore, was an American entrepreneur who built his wealth in shipping and railroads. He was also the patriarch of the Vanderbilt family and one of the richest Americans in history...

, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement...

, Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony

Susan Brownell Anthony was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President...

, restaurateur Charlie Delmonico

Delmonico's Restaurant

Delmonico's is the name of series of restaurants of varying duration, quality, and fame located in New York City. The original and most famous was operated by the Delmonico family during the 19th and early 20th centuries, closing due to a Prohibition-era slowdown in 1923...

, and Henry Ward Beecher

Henry Ward Beecher

Henry Ward Beecher was a prominent Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist, and speaker in the mid to late 19th century...

, with whom Woodhull is linked in a fiction

Fiction

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

al 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

Off-Off-Broadway

Off-Off-Broadway theatrical productions in New York City are those in theatres that are smaller than Broadway and Off-Broadway theatres. Off-Off-Broadway theaters are often defined as theaters that have fewer than 100 seats, though the term can be used for any show in the New York City area that...

 by the Joseph Jefferson Theatre Company. With its budget sets and costumes, [Anachronism|anachronistic]] pop

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

 score, and camp

Camp (style)

Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...

 burlesque

Burlesque

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

-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

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 production, directed by Julianne Boyd and choreographed by Michael Shawn, opened on December 14, 1980 at the Martin Beck Theatre

Al Hirschfeld Theatre

The Al Hirschfeld Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 302 West 45th Street in midtown-Manhattan.Designed by architect G. Albert Lansburgh for vaudeville promoter Martin Beck, the theatre opened as the Martin Beck Theatre with a production of Madame Pompadour on November 11, 1924. It...

, where it ran for one performance. The cast included Jill Eikenberry

Jill Eikenberry

Jill Eikenberry is an American film, stage, and television actress. She is best known for her role as lawyer Ann Kelsey in L.A. Law...

 as Woodhull, Michael Zaslow

Michael Zaslow

Michael Joel Zaslow was an American actor. He was best known for his role as villain Roger Thorpe on CBS's Guiding Light, a role he played from 1971 to 1980 and from 1989 to 1997.-Life and career:...

 as Beecher, Ted Thurston

Ted Thurston

Ted Thurston was an American actor and singer.Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Thurston made his Broadway debut in the short-lived 1951 musical Flahooley. He had better luck with his next show, the Lerner and Loewe musical Paint Your Wagon...

 as Vanderbilt, Laura Waterbury as Stanton, Dorothy Holland as Anthony, and Lenny Wolpe as Delmonico.

Theoni V. Aldredge

Theoni V. Aldredge

Theoni V. Aldredge was a Greek-American stage and screen costume designer.Born Theoni Athanasiou Vachlioti in Thessaloniki in 1922, Aldredge received her training at the American School in Athens. She emigrated to the United States in 1949 and attended the Goodman Theatre at DePaul University,...

 was nominated for the Drama Desk Award

Drama Desk Award

The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...

 for Outstanding Costume Design. A Broadway cast recording was released by Original Cast

Original Cast (record label)

Original Cast Records is a record label based in Georgetown, Connecticut, that specialises in obscure theatre recordings, primarily cast albums from little-known Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway and other stage productions, but also theatre-related film scores, cabaret, concert and solo...

Records.

Song list

Act I

• The Age of Brass
• Magnetic Healing
• Curiosity
• Beecher's Processional
• I Depend on You
• Victoria's Banner
• Changes
• A Taste of Forever
• Unescorted Women

Act II

• Love and Joy
• Everyday I Do a Little Something for the Lord
• It's Easy for Her
• You Cannot Drown the Dreamer
• Respectable
• Another Life
• Read It in The Weekly
• A Valentine for Beecher
• Beecher's Defense
• Another Life (Reprise)
• You Cannot Drown the Dreamer (Reprise)