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Kayla Davion

Liberation

February 25, 2025

Bess Wohl’s latest play is the ambitious and engrossing "Liberation," her attempt to investigate the roots of the Women’s Liberation Movement back in the 1970s from a decidedly contemporary point of view. Calling it a “memory play,” she uses a narrator “Lizzie,” who tries to recreate the consciousness raising group her mother started back in 1970 in Ohio where she lived at the time. Complicating things for the viewer, Lizzie also plays her own mother (who also seems to be named “Lizzie”) in the flashbacks, showing us seven meeting from the many the group had in their weekly encounters back in the seventies. She also interviews the survivors now in the present about what they recall of those days as her mother has recently passed away and she is sorry she didn’t ask her more questions. [more]

Elf the Musical

November 21, 2024

While incorporating the film's most memorable lines and story beats into their book, Bob Martin and the late Thomas Meehan also excised what they could to make room for composer Matthew Sklar and lyricist Chad Beguelin's brassy score, though it's not enough to prevent "Elf the Musical" from being about an hour longer than its cinematic version. Still, fret not accompanying adults, Sklar and Beguelin humorously reward persisting through the added length, with the laugh-inducing cleverness reaching its creative heights in the numbers that respectively kick off Acts I and II: "Happy All The Time," performed by a ridiculously high-spirited elven chorus line, and "Nobody Cares About Santa," a hilarious cry for appreciation from a despairing group of professional St. Nicks. Choreographer Liam Steel delightfully enhances the silliness, especially for the former number in which he cuts his impressively adaptable dancers down to an appropriate size. [more]