‘Liberation’ a moving interrogation of 1st wave feminism: review

The great playwright August Wilson used to say that he would just let his characters talk and then try to get out of their way. By contrast, Bess Wohl’s fascinating and superbly performed Broadway play, “Liberation,” says quite frankly that it is the playwright who speaks – or, more precisely, who poses question after question to her mother’s generation of second-wave feminists.

On the one hand, this ambitious and personal play, first seen on Broadway at the Roundabout Theater, is a moving tribute to the great thinkers who got naked in their meetings (which is why the show wisely locks the audience’s phones) and to the pioneers when it came to demanding respect and equal pay in the workplace, building reproductive rights and advancing sexual freedom, all while often raising children and caring for their poorly evolved husbands.

On the other hand, his continued questioning is a reminder of the endless fascination of Gen Xers and Millennials and the complexity of their feelings toward Baby Boomers.

“Why did you make these sacrifices?,” the play asks. “Did they bring you happiness?” “Did you abandon your principles when you had children? And, perhaps most interestingly, “did you actually liberate anyone besides yourself?”

You can also view this piece as a very telling reflection – for obvious reasons – of the current progressive era of anxiety.

Wohl’s authorial spokesperson, Lizzie (Susannah Flood), begins the series by introducing herself and her mother’s “friends” who form the feminist group that meets in a high school gymnasium somewhere in Ohio (David Zinn’s set resembles a functioning school gymnasium). She tells us she’ll play her mother (whose name she shares) and so she does, taking us into those 1970s advocacy meetings, but also into her own nagging feeling that the country has failed to follow through on the sacrifices of these women and has even gone in the opposite direction.

” For what ? ”, Lizzie (the daughter) often interrupts the play to ask. And does this mean that her mother’s feminist generation failed to make lasting, transferable change, even as they achieved a certain level of empowerment and power for themselves? Was her mother’s problem really that she fell in love with a handsome guy and left Ms. Magazine to take care of her children?

It’s a brave question to ask for a writer of Wohl’s generation, to be sure, especially since most feminist plays take some of the issues addressed here as inviolable truths and the handsome man in question is Lizzie’s father (played, with amusing deference to the rest of the series, by Charlie Thurston).

Make no mistake, this is sophisticated writing that goes well beyond the usual 90 minutes on Broadway and is also cleverly protected: in the opening scene, Lizzie even criticizes the audience for spending money on Broadway and still wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible. A paradox, she says, and she is right.

At times it feels like Wohl made a list of what other progressives might criticize about both the play and the movement (too rich, white, and straight), then consciously set out to push back against them by writing beyond her own experience. She achieves this, in large part thanks to this formidable ensemble, notably Kristolyn Lloyd, whose performance is the most dynamic of the evening. But there’s no doubt that Wohl, who studied at both Harvard and Yale, is writing from the perspective of the liberal elite: For example, we never find out which Ohio city the play is set in, although much is made of the excitement of life in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. A Buckeye would have made a different choice, but Wohl lives in Brooklyn, where Ohio functions primarily as a metaphor for the other America.

Thus, “Liberation” seems to be aimed more at the women of Park Slope than at the West Side of Cleveland. Then again, it’s who will probably be sitting in those expensive Broadway seats (maybe with their Upper West Side moms), but it answers one of Lizzie’s questions about the political direction of the world in a way that the play can’t quite acknowledge.

That said, asking these kinds of questions is rare, especially with this level of humility. The other great strength of “Liberation” is the power and humanity of its characters, even if Lizzie has difficulty remaining silent long enough to let them speak. All are skillfully performed under the direction of Whitney White. If there was a Tony Award for Best Ensemble, it would now be won by Betsy Aidem, Audrey Corsa, Kayla Davion, Irene Sofia Lucio, and Adina Verson, along with those aforementioned.

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll probably view “Liberation” as an exploration of the questions that always come to mind as the era of political activism recedes and a person realizes that successful relationships, children, and partners take even more work. It’s a version of the question “Can you have it all” to which, alas, the answer is always no. But the theater has always been the right place to ask questions. And hope.

“Libération” makes fun of long “masculine” plays written by people without children, which is a bit of a low blow, even if it reaches this audience. It actually has a lot in common with those epic lifts and that’s a compliment. There are some thematic interests and structural devices in common with Paula Vogel’s “Mother Play,” which is not surprising, but Wohl has such a powerful and enjoyable voice.

She makes everyone care about the questions she asks and that’s exactly what a playwright should do.