Playwright Bess Wohl wants us to know about the time before she was born when “women’s lib” was neither pejorative nor ironic. In “Liberation,” her warm, funny play opening tonight on Broadway about a group of feminists meeting weekly in 1970, she looks back without polemics, without parody; just with lots of questions. The real-life gathering that inspired the consciousness-raising group in the play was led by her mother.
“My devoted, dutiful mom who sewed the costumes for every school play and cooked every family dinner and did all the dishes and took me to every piano lesson and sat through it even though I was definitely not a musician, she was actually… a radical?”
This is Lizzie speaking, the stand-in for the playwright. She is portrayed by Susannah Flood, as is her mother, also named Lizzie. “Liberation,” which is subtitled “A Memory Play About Things I Don’t Remember,” is another dramatically inventive play by a writer who has a long list of them, starting (for me) with “Small Mouth Sounds,” which tells the story of six characters at a silent retreat using almost no dialogue.
In “Liberation,” Flood unobtrusively hops from inhabiting one Lizzie to the other, toggling between the present and the past as Lizzie the daughter narrates the story of the women who, after (the other) Lizzie had put up a flyer around town, start meeting every Thursday at 6 p.m. in the smelly basement basketball court of a rec center somewhere (unspecified) in Ohio. The play is largely a reenactment of those meetings, based on research by Lizzie the daughter (and Wohl the playwright) who interviews her mother’s friends.
Much of the strength of the production, which has moved intact from its Off-Broadway run earlier this year, resides in the ensemble acting, theater regulars portraying everyday women with grace and good humor.
Betsy Aidem portrays Margie, who is older than the others and the only woman in the group who is married with children. She always wanted to be a housewife, but her kids are grown, and her husband is retired, and she was just looking for something to do “to get me out of the house so I don’t stab him to death.” The other women laugh. “I realize that sounds like a joke. It’s not a joke.” Over the course of the play, as we see her become more radicalized, we also learn in concrete ways how she feels trapped in her marriage. At one point, she writes a long list of all the things she does around the house, the beginning of her campaign to get her husband to do at least one or two of them. It is a testament to both the writing and the acting that her situation is no joke, but we wind up laughing with her.
Irene Sofia Lucio is Isidora, a loud and bold Sicilian filmmaker stuck in the position of production assistant, and stuck as a wife, but only temporarily, so that she can get a green card. She tells the group to call her Dora.
Until the other Dora (Audrey Corsa) introduces herself; her full name is Dorothy. She thought this was a knitting group, but finds it interesting enough to stick around – for years. Dora is blonde and beautiful, and takes delight in her hair — which we understand thanks to Nikiya Mathis’s hair and wig design long before Dora tells us this directly. (Just one example at how spot-on the design team is in nailing the period without mocking it.) Dora finds solace in the group, and courage, when she’s passed over for a promotion, and she uncharacteristically shouts at her boss: The only thing Ray has that I don’t is a penis” – an encounter she shares enthusiastically with her friends in the group.
Adina Verson portrays Susan, who calls herself Susie Hurricane: “And no, that’s not my legal name, but it is my real name because, yeah, I don’t think things are “real” just because our dads gave ‘em to us.”
She has been a radical feminist and activist for years, feels burned out about it, sees herself as an outlaw; she owns a bird, which got her kicked out of her apartment in New York. She bought a tin can of a car and drove to Ohio to help set up a lefty bookstore. But the bookstore didn’t happen, and she doesn’t have a job, so now she sleeps in her car.
Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd), the only Black woman in the group, has a degree from Harvard (in the first year, she points out, that students from Radcliffe could get one) and worked as a book editor in New York until she returned to Ohio as the only responsible family member (as she puts it) able to take care of her ailing mother. She sees herself as an intellectual, and wears big eyeglasses to prove it to the white women – or so that is what another character accuses her of doing.
That other woman, Joanne, portrayed by Kayla Davion, is not part of the group. She is in the gym to look for a backpack that one of her four basketball-playing sons left there. She and Celeste get into an argument about the feminist movement – how it’s geared toward upper class white women – why else would they schedule a weekly meeting at 6 pm on a school night?
Celeste feels shaken after that encounter, and when Lizzie tries to comfort her, Celeste says to her: “Maybe just stick to your own story.”
This is one of the moments, where the playwright and the play and the characters in it merge – an admission that Wohl doesn’t have the answers.
Much happens as the play unfolds, including a scene where the characters (and the actors) take off all their clothes, and talk about what each loves and hates about her body – an exercise suggested by Ms. Magazine, a copy of which Dora has dutifully brought to the session. When it’s Celeste’s turn, she says the part of her body she loves the most is her brain. The answer is unexpected, but smart and witty, and, in its own way, liberating – just like the play.
Liberation
James Earl Jones Theater through January 11
Running time: About two and a half hours including an intermission
Tickets: $58 – $371
Written by Bess Wohl
Directed by Whitney White
Set design by David Zinn, costume design by Qween Jean, lighting design by Cha See, sound design by Palmer Hefferan, hair and wig design by Nikiya Mathis
Cast: Betsy Aidem as Margie, Audrey Corsa as Dora, Kayla Davion as Joanne, Susannah Flood as Lizzie, Kristolyn Lloyd as Celeste, Irene Sofia Lucio as Isidora, Charlie Thurston as Bill, and Adina Verson as Susan
