Review: Bess Wohl Interrogates the Women's Movement in Liberation Off-Broadway

“Am I doomed to become my mother?”

“Are American women screwed forever?”

Those questions are given equal weight in Bess Wohl’s new play Liberation, presented by Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre. In response, playwright Wohl creates multidimensional characters and deftly balances a personal story with the history of the women’s movement. Though the landing doesn’t quite stick, there’s enough to keep the thoughtful Liberation in the air throughout its two-and-a-half hours.

A pseudo-memory play, the nameless protagonist (Susannah Flood) is Wohl’s stand-in, a playwright whose mother, Lizzie, has recently passed. In examining Lizzie’s life, the writer wonders how she went from being a radicalized feminist to a “traditional” wife and mother. To find out, she imagines Lizzie’s interactions with her friends from her women’s liberation group, from Isadora (Irene Sofia Lucio), a bold Italian radical who’s only married for a green card to Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd), a seasoned activist forced taking care of her ill mother. The playwright has the chance to interview some of them in the present day, and, because she herself is playing Lizzie, she can interrogate their past selves as well. The text breaks the fourth wall throughout, in largely delightful ways.

We’re introduced to each of the women in quick succession, Margie (Betsy Aidem) is chafing against the household load that her retired husband does not participate in. Dorothy (Audrey Corsa)’s male coworker is being promoted above her even though she does more work. Susan (Adina Verson) has shuffled through various cities and now lives in her car. Though these characters could easily be reduced to stereotypes, they are loaded with enough specificity to feel like fully formed women. Their individual main character energy makes each the star of her own narrative, even if she is not the star of this play.

Celeste, the group’s lone Black member, is the most finely drawn, with depth brought out by Lloyd’s vivid performance. Through her, Wohl grapples with the racism inherent in white feminism, both in the second-wave movement and within the confines of her own play (a second Black character, played by Kayla Davion, pointedly remarks that she was not given a lot to do). It gives additional weight to the idea that feminist movements haven’t gone far enough.

Unfortunately, Lizzie remains enigmatic. Though she is the one to start the liberation group, she is nowhere near its most radical member, and in the second half of the play, she falls in love, gets married, and leaves town, with too little explanation to satisfy. Some of this is the point — one theme is that we can never fully know our mother — but there’s a lack of specifics that obscures and lowers the stakes. When the playwright claims Lizzie had “such a traditional marriage,” it seems like this would include stopping her activism and quitting her job. However, we find out that Lizzie moved to New York with her husband and worked at Ms. Magazine. That’s not exactly becoming a tradwife.

This enigmatic vibe carries over into Flood’s performance. She clearly has the capacity to differentiate Lizzie from her daughter with more specific character choices, but mostly does not, something that I think would have been enlightening to see explored. It leads to an ending that doesn’t quite achieve catharsis, though it does leave a lot for the audience to think about.

Whitney White’s direction is mostly fine but has a few unfocused moments. The lighting by Cha See is not refined enough to serve the storytelling: it’s hard to tell if Lizzie is remembering a real interaction with the characters’ present selves, or imaging a conversation with the characters’ past selves. Qween Jean’s costumes, however, are outstanding, creating a trajectory and even hinting at plot twists. It was fun watching the clothes change from disparate 1970s garb to matching blue denim, mirroring the message of the play.

In the end, the group outweighs the individual, and the positives of Liberation outweigh the negatives. It gives a full picture of the women’s movement and balances the personal and political – which, much like liberation itself, isn’t easy.