‘Suffs’ overview: How girls gained the vote, the musical

‘Suffs,’ Shaina Taub’s musical about how girls lastly secured the correct to vote in America, gained Tony Awards for its e book and rating. It misplaced the most effective musical race to “The Outsiders,” however the respect it earned when it opened final spring on Broadway made it an unequivocal winner.

The present is having its Los Angeles premiere on the Hollywood Pantages Theatre in a touring manufacturing that’s clean and sensible. Taub’s work deserves nothing lower than an “A.” The solid is great, the staging is swish and the political message couldn’t be extra well timed.

The present may not have the crackling vitality of “Hamilton” or the bluesy poignancy of “The Scottsboro Boys.” It’s deal extra earnest than both of those history-laden musicals. There’s an academic crucial on the coronary heart of “Suffs,” which offers with a topic that has been marginalized in colleges and within the collective consciousness.

The nineteenth Modification, which gave girls the correct to vote, was ratified in 1920, just a little greater than a century in the past. The historical past isn’t so distant but I’m positive I wasn’t the one one at Wednesday’s opening who was studying in regards to the forceful techniques that helped Alice Paul and her fellow suffragists push their motion over the end line.

“Suffs,” a musical for the general public sq., is as informative as it’s uplifting. It’s above all a transferring testomony to the ability of sisterhood. The wrestle for equality continues to face crushing setbacks as we speak, however Taub needs us to recollect what can occur when individuals stand united for a simply trigger.

Alice (a profitable Maya Keleher) doesn’t look like a rabble-rouser. A vivid, well-educated lady with a well mannered demeanor, she appears to be like like a future trainer of the 12 months greater than a radical organizer. However she has an activist’s most important high quality: She gained’t take no for a solution. (Keleher lends alluring heat to the function Taub made her Broadway debut in.).

She’s rebuffed by Carrie Chapman Catt (Marya Grandy), the president of the Nationwide American Girl Suffrage Affiliation, whose motto (“Let your all-American mom vote”) is the idea for the present’s opening quantity, “Let Mom Vote” — a distillation of the old-guard strategy that has but to yield girls the vote.

Alice needs to prepare a march in Washington D.C. to pressure the president’s reluctant hand, however Carrie prefers a extra genteel technique. “Miss Paul, if my late nice mentor Susan B. Anthony taught me something, it’s that males are solely prepared to contemplate our trigger if we current it in a lady-like trend.

“State by state, gradual and regular, till the nation’s prepared” is, in any case, NAWSA’s elementary creed. However Alice factors out that in the event that they proceed at this glacial tempo they’ll be useless earlier than they’ll ever solid a vote.

Swinging into motion, Alice groups up along with her good friend Lucy Burns (Gwynne Wooden), who worries that they haven’t the expertise to tackle such a momentous mission. “We’ve by no means deliberate a nationwide motion earlier than,” she objects at first of their duet “Discover a Method.” However undaunted Alice has the daring concept of recruiting Inez Milholland (performed on the opening night time efficiency by Amanda Okay. Lopez), and a method ahead miraculously materializes.

Inez has simply the correct glamorous public picture that Alice thinks will give their march the publicity enhance it wants. Learning for the bar examination, Inez is initially reluctant however agrees if she will lead the march on horseback.

This picture of Inez on a steed turns into central each to the motion and to director Leigh Silverman’s manufacturing, which finds easy but putting methods of bringing revolutionary change to life. A refrain line of activists carrying suffragist white (kudos to the luminous tact of costume designer Paul Tazewell) eloquently communicates what solidarity can pull off.

Brandi Porter, left, and Jenny Ashman as President Woodrow Wilson in ‘Suffs.”

(Joan Marcus)

An all-female solid dramatizes this inspiring American story. Taub takes some fictional license with the characters however largely sticks to the document.

Notable allies in Alice’s group embody Ruza Wenclawska (Joyce Meimei Zheng) a Polish-born commerce union organizer with a no-nonsense grassroots fashion, and Doris Stevens (Livvy Marcus), a shy but undeterred pupil from Nebraska who turns into the group’s secret weapon secretary.

Ida B. Wells (Danyel Fulton), an early chief within the civil rights motion, takes half within the march however resists getting used as a prop in what she calls NAWSA’s “white girls conference.” Mary Church Terrell (Trisha Jeffrey), a fellow Black activist, in contrast believes that it’s solely via participation that illustration can transfer ahead.

President Woodrow Wilson (Jenny Ashman), who makes guarantees to the suffragists he’s hesitant to maintain, is an important goal of Alice’s stress marketing campaign. Her group’s entry to him is aided by Dudley Malone (Brandi Porter), Wilson’s right-hand man, who turns into smitten with Doris.

The rating marches forward in a way that makes progress appear, if not inevitable, relentless in its pursuit of justice. The songs mix the patriotic exuberance of John Philip Sousa and the American breadth of Broadway composer Stephen Flaherty (“Ragtime”). The observe of pop accessibility in Taub’s music and the satiric humor of her lyrics add to the buoyancy. You gained’t go away buzzing a tune, however the general impact (whereas ephemeral) is pleasant within the theater.

With the historical past already decided, the e book can’t assist resembling at instances a civics exhibition. Dramatic rigidity is difficult to return by. Alice and her cohorts endure grave disappointments and indignities (together with a harrowing stint in jail), however the eventual consequence of their struggles is thought.

“Suffs” typically appears like a historical past lesson neatly compartmentalized into Essential Episodes. There’s a whiff of PBS to the way in which the musical unfolds. That is cultural programming that’s good for you.

However the teamwork of the performers honors the messy but undeniably efficient cooperation of Alice and her freedom fighters — girls who modified the world by not staying silent of their prescribed place.