In 1878, Senator Aaron A. Sargent introduced to Congress a woman’s suffrage amendment. Forty-two years later it would become the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, making it illegal to deny the right to vote on the basis of sex. Three years later, The Equal Rights Amendment was proposed. Declaring full equality for women in terms of divorce, property, employment…it failed ratification. “Progress is possible, not guaranteed,” sings Alice Paul.
Left: Cover of WSPU’s The Suffragette, April 25, 1913 (Public Domain) Right: Virginia Arnold holding Kaiser Wilson banner in picket of the White House (Public Domain)
1913. The 65th! Annual luncheon of The National Women’s Suffrage Association finds leader Carrie Chapman Catt singing, “Let Mother Vote.” The suggestion is feminine and polite. We’ll vote like our husbands, this won’t influence home life – she seems to say. (Jenn Colella – fine voice, sympathetic portrayal. ) Twenty-eight year-old Quaker Alice Paul (Hawley Gould, alternate for Shaina Taub, who is out tonight) proposes a more aggressive campaign. Spirited and impatient, she finds neither mentor nor support. The young woman decides, with no backing or experience, a march on Washington is needed- in two months!
Alice is joined by: Lucy Burns (Ally Bonino), portrayed as a college friend, but already a member of predecessor Emmeline Pankhurst’s organization; lawyer Inez Milholland (Hannah Cruz), who will lead the first march riding a white horse and unwittingly give her young life to the movement; trade union organizer Ruza Wenclawska (Kim Blanck, replete with Polish accent); and naïve Doris Stevens (Nadia Dandashi), who travels from Nebraska to join, becoming secretary by default. In 1920, Stevens would author Jailed for Freedom recounting the fight.
Kim Blanck (Ruza Wenclawska), Hannah Cruz (Inez Milholland), Nikki M. James (Ida B. Wells), Nadia Dandashi (Doris Stevens), Shania Taub (Alice Paul), Ally Bonino (Lucy Burns)
These women existed. Most went on to other positions with the objective of women’s rights. Though some characters are better written, all the actors are excellent. Hawley Gould, apparently stepping in at the last moment, is terrific. She sings well, is convincing, and looks the part, inhabiting stubborn perseverance that becomes the show’s backbone.
The burgeoning leader’s first awakening is provoked by proud African American reformer, Ida B. Wells, (a vivid Nikki M. James), journalist and a founder of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Wells shows up for the march only to be infuriatingly told Black women would be placed at the rear so as not to outrage Southern supporters. Friend and fellow civil-rights advocate Mary Terrell (Anastacia McCleskey) tells Wells participation is more important than location. Their opposing attitudes mirror that of Alice and Carrie. Ida will not be restrained. (Both women were actual.)
Hannah Cruz (Inez Milholland) Leading the March
Suffs says 200,000 women march. Various web sites put the number between 5,000 and 10,000, nonetheless an accomplishment. For maximum exposure, the demonstration is held the day before first term Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Washington police do little to keep objectors from interfering. The women feel (and sing) a part of something bigger than their own state chapters.
Doris is upset by one angry female calling her a “bitch.” The others sing, “I’d rather be right than rich/I’m a great American bitch,” which lists the rights women are disparaged from pursuing. Perceiving her a capable minion, Carrie offers Alice financial aid in exchange for regulating protest activities. The young firebrand provisionally shakes hands, but they’ll never agree. Half a dozen fruitless meetings with the president follow.
Nadia Dandashi (Doris), Shania Taub (Alice), Kim Blanck (Ruza), All Bonino (Lucy), Hannah Cruz (Inez)
An anti-Wilson campaign fails. The president wins a second term. Connection with a disapproving Carrie is severed. Funding arrives by way of a rich widow, Alva Belmont (splendid Emily Skinner). Wilson is played by Grace McClean who seems like she’s starring in the Kaufman/Hart/Rodgers musical I’d Rather Be Rich, i.e. chipper and obtuse. When others, notably Inez, attempt to leave, she talks them out of it: “Go read a novel, bake a cake? What will you tell your children?”
By the end of Act I, we know a great deal about crusading establishment and roadblocks, but consequences seem lightweight. In Britain, suffragettes were beaten, locked out of their homes, kept from their children. Already arrested several times, in 1913, Emily Davison threw herself in front of King George V’s horse at Epsom Derby martyring herself to the cause. Pankhurst had suggested only public death would garner attention. I wonder whether the show will be, like so much on Broadway, homogenized.
Anastacia McClenkey, Laila Erica Drew, and Nikki M. James as Mary Church Terrell, her daughter, Phyllis Terrell, and Ida B. Wells
Taub takes care of this in Act II. A group of rotating women stand silently outside the White House gates for three months with banners reading such as “Kaiser Wilson.” They’re punched and dragged by angry crowds as police passively watch. (We don’t see this.)
Alice and core associates are arrested and sent to prison where she instigates a hunger strike. Conditions are deplorable. The women are subjected to force feeding; Alice to a psychiatric hospital. Was the president aware? Here he seems willing to intercede only when letters are smuggled out and printed. A Punch Magazine cartoon shows men standing around a female singing, “I didn’t raise my girl to be a voter,” parodying the antiwar, “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.”
Hannah Cruz (Inez Milholland)
The musical goes on to portray events to 1920. An appealing side story conjectures Doris’s meeting with and affecting the opinion of Dudley Malone, a solid Tsilala Brock, then collector of The Port of New York, a man with Wilson’s ear. Whether she did or not, the real Malone quit the administration and advocated women’s suffrage. He married Doris.
On November 2, 1920, more than eight million women voted in elections for the first time. Ida and Mary are aware that African Americans will still face determent, an issue that continues to today. If you didn’t feel shame about lack of a ratified Equal Rights Amendment before, you’re likely to do so exiting the theater. The piece is informative, entertaining and rousing. Take people; bus in schools.
New York Suffragettes – The New York Times, 1919 (Public Domain)
In addition to the author, the entire cast and orchestra are women. Producers include Hillary Rodham Clinton and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.
Shaina Taub has reopened the conversation about women’s rights in a manner that will hopefully go down more successfully than sheer anger or polemic. Her script is articulate, human, and for the most part, based in fact. Audience reacts to the cause as if at a rally. Lyrics are explicit; music could use more variation. You won’t go home humming anything, but furtherance of plot and character explication is well crafted.
One note: President Wilson is depicted as weak, ill informed and something of a poseur, making him a less formidable opponent. Apparently, like most men at the time, he felt women should be ladylike and domestic. Wilson tipped his hat to encamped “Silent Sentinels” outside the White House, not at first taking them seriously. When he finally addressed Congress, however, the President said, “We have made partners of the women in this war…Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?” History declares this his reasoning. It’s as likely that he was influenced by increasing power of the movement.
Director Leigh Silverman creates chillingly effective prison scenes with contribution by choreographer Mayte Natalio. Though single line formations are repetitive, protests and marches imply more women without the use of ubiquitous projections. Relationships are clear and nuanced.
Minimal scenic design (Riccardo Hernandez) effectively directs attention to the ladies. A burning in effigy, shoots flames from the floor/ground while the ersatz figure of Wilson disappointingly bears but a second of fire.
Costumes (Paul Tazewell) are not only period perfect but attractive and share the stage well. That demonstrators would not have coordinated dress colors seems a moot point. Charles G. LaPointe (everywhere these days) is satisfyingly realistic with hair and wig design.
Photos by Joan Marcus
Opening: Jean Colella as Carrie Chapman Catt and the company
Suffs
Book, Music and Lyrics by Shana Taub
Directed by Leigh Silverman
The Music Box
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