I don’t keep in mind my grade faculty historical past books dedicating quite a lot of sentences to the ladies’s suffrage motion. The almost 100-year historical past of girls preventing for the precise to vote is commonly trimmed down to 2 important speaking factors — Susan B. Anthony and the nineteenth Modification — and a few dismissed the suffragists as self-serious rabble-rousers.
In an effort to counter these notions of those revolutionary girls and their combat, the brand new musical “Suffs” begins with the satirical vaudeville-inspired “Watch Out for the Suffragette!,” sung by the ensemble, made up of feminine and nonbinary actors. (The present was scheduled to open Wednesday on the Public Theater, however canceled due to constructive coronavirus assessments.) They’re wearing drag — even mustaches — caricaturing their male detractors. We’re in for a tedious historical past lesson, these hypothetical skeptics predict in music; a dreaded feminist is “planning to scold you for 3 hours straight.”
My first thought: Pricey God, I hope not.
“Suffs” has a hefty two-hour-and-45-minute working time, in any case, and although the musical isn’t responsible of scolding, it’s responsible of stifling a powerful — although exhausting — breadth of U.S. historical past by means of its up to date lens.
Shaina Taub, the Public Theater’s playwright in residence and creator of the musical, stars as Alice Paul, the headstrong younger suffragist who assembles a bunch of girls who lead protests, endure abuse and incarceration, and march on Washington for his or her proper to entry the poll field.
Taub provides a steely efficiency as Paul, although her standby (Holly Gould) has stepped into the function, as Taub examined constructive for the coronavirus simply earlier than the manufacturing’s scheduled opening.
Paul is joined within the metaphorical barracks by Lucy Burns (performed by an understated Ally Bonino), her buddy and fellow suffragist who helped Paul type the Nationwide Girl’s Celebration. There’s additionally Doris Stevens (Nadia Dandashi, teeming with earnestness), an keen younger scholar and author from Ohio, and Ruza Wenclawska (a droll Hannah Cruz), the tough-as-nails Polish American manufacturing facility employee and union organizer. Inez Milholland (Phillipa Soo), a labor lawyer and stylish socialite, is their public face; as Inez, Soo, the beloved “Hamilton” alum, brings sugar, sass and magnificence to the group, marching with a cocktail in a single hand and a cigarette within the different.
Within the seven years which are lined within the musical — 1913 to 1920, when the nineteenth Modification was lastly ratified — Paul butts heads together with her sisters within the combat. She has a yearslong dispute with Carrie Chapman Catt (Jenn Colella), who, as the top of the Nationwide American Girl Suffrage Affiliation, thinks Paul’s strikes are too radical. And there’s the journalist and suffragist Ida B. Wells (Nikki M. James), who unsuccessfully tries to convey race into the motion, difficult Paul’s myopic imaginative and prescient for change.
However her precise opponent is the president, Woodrow Wilson (Grace McLean), who noodles across the stage, step-kicking down stairs with a high hat and a cane whereas gaily singing misogynistic lyrics like “Males make the cash/Women make the bread/Males make the principles/Women make the mattress.” McLean’s jaunty efficiency introduces a few of the few moments of levity within the musical; in any other case a common stiffness pervades the manufacturing.
Possibly that’s as a result of the entire manufacturing feels so attuned to the gender politics and protests of right this moment, so conscious of potential critiques that it takes on its topic with an overabundance of warning. So a mere 20 minutes into the present, “Suffs” makes it clear it’s not framing Paul as the right warrior-saint of the motion. When Paul is dismissive of Wells she responds with the music “Wait My Flip” (“Do you not understand you’re not free till I’m free./Or do you refuse to see?”), establishing her function because the racial conscience of the musical, popping up each now and again as a reminder of the pitfalls of white feminism. And all these girls and tales of their activism are uncomfortably stuffed right into a present too scared to overlook something that it turns into bloated with info.
In some ways “Suffs” lands like a clunky inheritor of the Public’s different huge historic musical, “Hamilton,” borrowing a few of its approaches to construction whereas attempting to keep away from the criticisms about its politics round girls and slavery. However that’s the danger that comes with recasting historical past with right this moment’s sensibilities in thoughts. Even this feminist story often serves retorts to these funky founding fathers who met in “the room the place it occurs”; our suffragists sing about how no girls obtained to witness the signing of the nineteenth Modification themselves as a result of “a person signed the paper behind a closed door in a room someplace.”
However the musical doesn’t have to strive so arduous to defend itself or show its relevance, say, by exhibiting the threats and taunts of males interjected into songs like “The March.” Neither does it have to fall again on preciousness, like when a Tennessee state senator’s mom, an “outdated farmer’s widow,” sings a banjo-heavy music pleading together with her son to vote for suffrage with a promise of his favourite meatloaf in return. Or the pat pairing of some {couples} ultimately, and the heavy-handed finale, “By no means Over,” concerning the steady march towards progress.
The path, by Leigh Silverman, feels as methodical because the textual content; the pacing is speedy, and the songs are dense with exposition like these of “Hamilton.” However “Suffs” seems to be all work and largely no play, and in the case of the music itself nothing actually pops. There are just a few dry touches of vaudeville, and pop and a few sugary songs like “If We Have been Married,” a quantity that appears like a up to date stab at Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’s 1937 rendition of “Let’s Name the Complete Factor Off.” It’s a parody of such cutesy courtship numbers but it delivers simply that.
The music is most fascinating when it sheds the exposition and permits the characters house to precise their hopes, frustrations and needs. Colella slays her efficiency in a single such music, the prickly “This Lady.” Colella clips her phrases and sharpens her gestures, hitting her notes with the punch of a boxer within the ring. The harmonies, too, like these within the ensemble quantity “How Lengthy,” which shifts from a tone of despair to certainly one of resilience, additionally present the music with much-needed dimension.
The choreographer Raja Feather Kelly’s usually transgressive model (exhibited in reveals like “A Unusual Loop” and “Fairview”) feels defanged, ball-and-chained to its very literal interpretation of the fabric; there’s a lot marching and posing, syncopated stepping. Mimi Lien brings the same austerity to her set design — the stately steps and columns of Congress, maybe, or some institutional constructing — however the simplicity right here works, permitting “Suffs” to give attention to its various solid of history-makers. Within the costume design, Toni-Leslie James strikes a satisfying steadiness between formal high-waisted skirts and black lace-up boots, and the splashy wide-brimmed hats have sufficient ribbons and feathers to make a Southern churchgoer swoon.
“Suffs” ends with a passing of the torch from one technology of change-makers to the following, revisiting the most recent conflict of latest politics versus outdated politics: What was as soon as revolutionary turns into old-fashioned. For all of the work this present does to light up the successes — and failures — of the ladies’s rights motion, and the always evolving nature of our politics, it focuses a lot vitality on seeming as well timed as potential. However, because the suffs be taught, actions rework; our authorities leaders change, as do the calls for of the individuals on the picket line. It’s a lesson the musical ought to take to coronary heart: You possibly can’t reside previously, current and way forward for our nation’s politics unexpectedly — no less than not with out dropping your method.
Suffs
By Could 15 on the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Working time: 2 hours 45 minutes.
Supply: NY Times
