Bess Wohl’s new drama about a small-town 1970 women’s-lib group “takes an old form and shakes it like a freshly laundered sheet in the breeze,” said Sara Holdren in NYMag.com. A memory play, Liberation is also “the best play I’ve seen this season,” because it “balances the intensely personal and the broadly civic, the ethical and the theatrical, with extraordinary rigor and grace.”
Susannah Flood occupies the crucial roles of both a narrator in our present and Lizzie, a character inspired by Wohl’s mother, who organized the consciousness-raising group around the time of the national Women’s Strike for Equality. The action all takes place on the basketball court of an Ohio rec center, where Lizzie is joined by five other group participants who “proceed to summon and surf a growing wave of charisma, camaraderie, tenderness, and tension.” But we’re also forever aware that this is a story being told by Flood’s narrator, a stand-in for Wohl who is able to regularly break into the 1970 scene and converse with the other characters.
“Gripping and funny and formally daring,” Liberation examines the unfinished business of feminism for its own purposes, said Jesse Green in The New York Times. The group shows us a range of discontent. Empty nester Margie (Betsy Aidem) says she is on the verge of stabbing her husband. Susan (Adina Verson) yearns to ride naked on a Harley, apparently with a girlfriend nestled behind her. Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd), the only Black woman, is bitter about having had to return home to care for her dying mother. For a while, the narrator is questioning, from a distance of five decades, why these women didn’t achieve more. But “in a series of wonderful surprises,” the ’70s cohort finally fights back.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Wohl’s sharp wit “scrapes away the reverential attitude that you might expect from a play about the nascent women’s movement,” said Charles Isherwood in The Wall Street Journal. But “there is little the director, Whitney White, can do to tame the play’s unruly structure,” particularly in a first act that burdens the excellent cast with “windy stretches of monologue and dialogue.” That flaw might be hardwired into the subject matter. “After all, you probably cannot raise your consciousness or anyone else’s without making your voice heard, repeatedly and at length.”
-
October 13 editorial cartoonsCartoons Monday's political cartoons include Donald Trump's consolation prize, government workers during shutdown, and more
-
Can Gaza momentum help end the war in Ukraine?Today's Big Question Zelenskyy’s request for long-range Tomahawk missiles hints at ‘warming relations’ between Ukraine and US
-
The Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners being releasedThe Explainer Triumphant Donald Trump addresses the Israeli parliament as families on both sides of the Gaza war reunite with their loved ones
-
The delightful, smutty world of Jilly CooperIn the Spotlight Millions mourn the ‘Mrs Kipling of sex’
-
A Taylor Swift analysis, the digital-addiction solution plus what it means to be a gay Black artist — all in October booksThe Week Recommends This month's new releases include ‘Taylor’s Version’ by Stephanie Burt, ‘Enshittification’ by Cory Doctorow and ‘Minor Black Figures’ by Brandon Taylor
-
Lee Miller at the Tate: a ‘sexy yet devastating’ showThe Week Recommends The ‘revelatory’ exhibition tells the photographer’s story ‘through her own impeccable eye’
-
6 eye-catching rounded homesFeature Featuring a central spiral staircase in Michigan and a Balinese-style estate with ocean views in Hawaii
-
A House of Dynamite: a ‘nail-biting’ nuclear-strike thrillerThe Week Recommends ‘Virtuoso talent’ Kathryn Bigelow directs a ‘fast-paced’ and ‘tense’ ‘symphony of dread’
-
The Finest Hotel in Kabul: a ‘haunting’ history of modern AfghanistanThe Week Recommends Lyse Doucet’s sensitively written work traces over 50 years of Kabul’s ‘Inter-Con’ hotel
-
The Smashing Machine: Dwayne Johnson is ‘magnetic’ in gritty biopicThe Week Recommends The wrestler-turned-Hollywood-actor takes on the role of troubled UFC champion Mark Kerr
-
Shadow Ticket: Thomas Pynchon’s first novel in over a decadeThe Week Recommends Zany whodunnit about a private eye in 1930s Milwaukee could be the 88-year-old author’s ‘last hurrah’
