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Suffs

Suffs

May 3, 2024

The transfer to Broadway has brilliantly expanded the show.  The new production designed by Riccardo Hernández (scenery), Paul Tazewell (costumes), Lap Chi Chu (lighting) and Charles G. LaPointe (wigs & hair) brings Taub’s script to vivid life, much better than the more didactic and spare Public Theater rendering.  These artists put Taub’s script into historical context making the battle all the more vibrant. The new version also has rethought the casting, reshuffled and improved the songs and, more importantly, is more focused and effective in telling about the conflicts—internal and external—that plagued the suffrage movement.  These included dissonance between Catt and Paul; the thorn-in-the-movement’s side of the Black contingent led by the brilliant Ida B. Wells (a charismatic Nikki M. James); and the far left, Socialist ideals of the hothead Ruza Wenclawska (Kim Blanck, brilliantly avoiding caricature). [more]

Suffs

April 30, 2022

Unfortunately, while Wells (Nikki M. James) and Mary Church Terrell (Cassondra James), another renowned Black suffragist, occasionally pop up to offer intersectional insights, they mostly come across as an addendum to the all-female and nonbinary musical's Paul-centric narrative. Taub knows Wells and Terrell obviously belong in the story she's trying to tell, but she hasn't figured out how to dramatize their inclusion yet. Other suffragists whose names should be much more well known today also receive paper-thin characterizations: Lucy Burns (Ally Bonino); Doris Stevens (Nadia Dandashi); Ruza Wenclawska (Hannah Cruz); Inez Milholland (Phillippa Soo). [more]