Tough 'Suffs.' Ghost plays. A cult starts to crack.
Plus 'Passion', 'Mariology', 'Table 17,' R.I.P. Murray Mednick, and more
When “Suffs,” a musical set primarily in the early-20th-century women’s suffrage movement, opened on Broadway on April 18, 2024, I’ll guess that some spectators found it half-compelling but half-quaint.
But since then, the most misogynistic president in my lifetime defeated yet another woman who could have been the first female president. And suddenly, the “compelling” qualities of “Suffs” surged to the forefront. Forget “quaint.”
The “Suffs” touring company has now stormed into LA, at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Angelenos can witness how this striking (in more ways than one) new musical is so germane to the present moment.
Shaina Taub, who wrote the music, lyrics and libretto of “Suffs,” focuses on Alice Paul (Maya Keleher), a then-cutting-edge feminist in comparison to her more patient older predecessor Carrie Chapman Catt (Marya Grandy). Paul is willing to go to jail and conduct a hunger strike there, in her efforts to prod President Woodrow Wilson, who keeps postponing action about women’s right to vote.
Paul is hardly alone in her efforts. “Suffs” has a cast of 18 women. Many of them play Paul’s fellow activists, including best friend Lucy (Gwynne Wood), a secretary (Livvy Marcus), a socialist (Joyce Meimei Zheng) and two African-American feminists (Danyel Fulton and Trisha Jeffrey) who espouse contrasting strategies. And let’s not forget the glamorous and wealthy Inez Milholland (played by understudy Amanda K. Lopez on opening night), who died at the age of 30 while campaigning for suffrage in Los Angeles, exactly 109 years ago — on November 25, 1916.
Women also play the two major male characters, Wilson (Jenny Ashman) and the president’s chief aide (Brandi Porter).
“Suffs” has 33 musical numbers. Taub won separate Tonys for the book and the score, but sometimes they seem almost inextricable. Although the production includes several musical numbers that could qualify as rabble-rousers, many of the musical moments are conversational recitatives or brief reprises of earlier songs. It’s a complicated tale, and Taub charts most of it through music, which enhances the efficiency of the storytelling, as does the sure-footed staging by Leigh Silverman.
Of course this reliance on music requires a level of lyrical clarity that can be challenging in the cavernous Pantages. At least from my seat, most of Taub’s remarkably polished phrases and rhymes arrived in my brain intact. Sound designer Jason Crystal and music supervisor Andrea Grody worked on the Broadway version and also receive credits in the tour program.
The show’s sets were apparently somewhat streamlined for the tour (Christine Peters designed the tour set but not Broadway’s), but costume designer Paul Tazewell’s creations are in both versions. Overall, the show’s look matches the crisp efficiency of the score.
The “Suffs” tour is scheduled to arrive in Washington, DC — where much of it is set — next June, at the National Theatre, not the Kennedy Center (which is reported to be in chaos fomented by our aspiring dictator). However, the National —overseen by a non-profit that employs the Nederlander Organization to operate it, without federal oversight — is even closer to the White House, about two blocks from what was the mansion’s East Wing.
Of course Trump summarily ordered the East Wing to be demolished — as if it belonged to him personally. Perhaps more guards than usual should be on duty to protect the National during the run of “Suffs.” The Donald and his declining fan base wouldn’t appreciate Taub’s triumph any more than they esteemed Jimmy Kimmel’s wisecracks.
Afterlife ‘Activity’ in two plays
Meanwhile, you can currently see a classic that covers roughly the same span of years in which most of “Suffs” takes place. But Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”, in Group Repertory Theatre’s revival in North Hollywood, is set in largely rural New Hampshire, far from the urban sites of “Suffs.” Seeing “Suffs,” then “Our Town,” in rapid succession reminded me that most women (and men) in that era were in much more stratified gender roles that those of the younger women in “Suffs.”
Of course “Our Town” isn’t primarily about gender stereotypes — it’s essentially about the meaning of life and death, from many perspectives. Mareli Mitchel-Shields’ staging is quite effective. More characters emerge from the audience in this 90-seat venue than in any production of it that I recall. This activity underlines the “our” in the title. I also liked the musical transition between acts 2 and 3.
However, in the graveyard scene that ends the play, one of the female spirits of the dead who are buried there is wearing a sash that prominently displays the phrase “VOTES FOR WOMEN.” Huh? Maybe it’s conceivable that a small-town suffragist had recently died in Grover’s Corners — but Wilder didn’t conceive it. Yet this spirit, who says that she likes the hymn she hears, is also indicating through her sash that she was a “Suff”?
Perhaps director Mitchel-Shields wanted to take note of the concurrent suffragist movement as well as the rigidly defined sex roles in Grover’s Corners, but she didn’t have permission to change any lines? So she used a costume for that purpose? Sorry, but no. Though the spirits in the graveyard scene are still talking to each other, they’re pointedly losing their interest in earthly matters. I’d guess that those matters would include voting. The spirits wouldn’t want to be accused of voting fraud at this point in their afterlives.
FYI, two of the “Our Town” actors are alternating in the narrator role of the Stage Manager at different performances. I saw Neil Thompson, who was very skilled at leavening the pathos with humor.
Speaking of spirits from the afterlife, AKA “ghosts,” the current play at the Ahmanson, “Paranormal Activity,” is full of ‘em. But we don’t see them. We see a young American couple in a big house in London, trying to escape from spectral terrors, and we might share a few moments of the fright caused by the sudden movements and sounds. We admire the set, lighting, sound and illusions. We hear details about the couple’s biographies that supposedly triggered their problems. But we don’t share much attachment to these people or to their ghosts.
Levi Holloway’s script, directed by Felix Barrett, is a stage spinoff of a long-running film franchise. I recently watched the first, cheaply produced film in the series, set in San Diego instead of London. It appeared to be shot mostly on hand-held video cameras, and I felt closer to the action, perhaps because I was watching it in my living room instead of a fancy 2000-seat theater. But I remain largely uninterested in the whole idea of taking ghosts literally instead of more figuratively (as in “Our Town”).
‘The Twelfth and Final’ Sunstroke
Are you looking for a play that’s as frightening, but a lot funnier, than “Paranormal Activity”? I recommend “Hello, My Name Is…”, a Moving Arts production in Atwater Village. Don’t delay — it’s closing on December 7, a week earlier than the date previously announced.
Amy Dellagiarino’s script is set in the headquarters of a cult, the Order of the Twelfth and Final Sun. We meet two women, veteran Reagan (Rebecca Larsen) and the younger, less committed Kiki (Roni Paige). Then we gradually meet the two men who live in the next room — newcomer Micah (Brandon Bales) and his longer-tenured mentor Chase (Bradley J. Bazile), who clearly can’t stand Micah.
Finally the cult leader “J” (Juan Monsalvez) shows up, under somewhat difficult circumstances. I can’t write about the plot without giving too much of it away. But Dellagiarino has created an engrossing tale, and director Darin Anthony kept me intensely engaged from beginning to end. The small stage is perfect for the material, which would be more challenging in a larger venue. However, Anthony’s program note suggests that he was also thinking about our larger national stage as well as what’s happening in this tiny room. No one is mentioning any real-life names in that context, but I wonder if “J” was at all inspired by…“D”.
Closing this weekend
“Passion” is a 1994 Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical that received only one previous LA production with more than one performance — from East West Players in 2003. Chromolume Theatre’s current revival is a rare opportunity to see this quite intimate narrative in a much more intimate room — the Zephyr Theatre on Melrose. The venue lacks the space for an orchestra, so the accompaniment is from only a keyboardist and a drummer. But James Esposito’s staging moved me more than East West’s or the original Broadway production.
The story, set in mid-19th-century Italy, opens as soldier Giorgio (Paul Luoma) is making love with the glamorous Clara (May DeLan). But he is called to duty at a remote outpost, where he meets a colleague’s cousin Fosca (Nora Elkind), who obsessively falls in love with him. Subsequent matters become more complex than I had remembered. The unmiked voices carry the production, although costumes by Shon LeBlanc and lighting by Devin Harris help out.
More shows closing December 7
Boston Court in Pasadena, which had scheduled its own production of “Passion” in 2020 — until COVID hit — is currently presenting Nancy Keystone’s “Mariology,” in collaboration with Critical Mass Performance Group. It’s more or less a satire of a different kind of passion, and perhaps a different kind of cult — Catholics who have elevated Mary almost to the level of Jesus. For this non-Catholic, it was interesting for about 15 minutes. A program note that Keystone and her siblings were the only Jewish kids in a Catholic elementary school led me to expect a more personal story — but it isn’t. Instead it becomes a rather repetitive protest/performance/spectacle. The program also says that part of it is set “50 years later,” but that lasts no more than about two minutes at the end.
Douglas Lyons’ “Table 17,” at Geffen Playhouse, is a superficial comedy about a couple who previously were an item and who are now re-uniting in a restaurant. Will they get back together? Did I care? No. A few audience members are seated on the stage at restaurant tables. Apparently this was intended to provide more verisimilitude and audience engagement. But it actually restricted the sense of place — especially when there was a flashback. I initially didn’t grasp that it was a flashback, and I thought other characters were being introduced. Also, the frequent requests for the men in the audience to approve of what the man said and for the women to approve of what the woman said struck me as pandering to gender stereotypes.
In “Pointy Scissors,” at Theatre West in the Cahuenga Pass, I liked the performances of Steve Young and Angela Bruning as an adult brother and sister who operate a family barber shop. Young’s character seems to be on the autistic spectrum, although no one mentions it in the play. Unfortunately, Clara Rodriguez’s script gets carried away with plot turns, which are refreshingly surprising initially but which eventually go over the cliff of conceivability in the play’s last third.
Murray Mednick, R.I.P.
Murray Mednick, one of LA’s most accomplished practitioners of “experimental” or “avant-garde” theater for the last half-century, died last month at the age of 86.
He was initially a New York waiter-turned-poet-turned-playwright and director. But in the last part of the 20th century, he migrated to LA and created the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, which started in 1978 as a site-specific outdoor event in the San Gabriel Mountains foothills north of Claremont. The playwrights who created work for the first festival were Mednick plus a pair who preceded him in death — Sam Shepard (who graduated from high school in nearby Duarte before becoming one of America’s best-known playwrights and a movie star) and María Irene Fornés.
The festival moved to other locations throughout the LA area from 1984 to 1995, then was transformed into Padua Hills Productions in the 21st century, managed by the much younger Guy Zimmerman, whose tribute to Mednick is online at American Theatre.
Among Mednick’s own plays, “Coyote Cycle” stands out from the Padua period. It was introduced in separate parts at Padua Hills and then was presented in its entirety in an all-night staging at Paramount Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains in August 1985. Among his later plays, the somewhat autobiographical “Joe and Betty” probably received the most attention. Along with his “16 Routines” and “Mrs. Feuerstein,” it examined the world of Mednick’s childhood — much of which occurred in New York’s Catskills Borscht Belt, where his struggling family was surrounded by refugees from the Holocaust.
To better understand Mednick’s style and his story, check out Richard Whittaker’s in-depth Q-and-A conversation with him, from 2018.
By the way, an indoor/outdoor Padua Hills Theatre is near the site of Mednick’s festival even today. Originally used for community theater in the ‘30s, including some Spanish-language productions, now it’s used mostly for weddings— a very different kind of theater — as well as community nonprofit events. Will those hills ever again be alive with the sound of professional actors?