While Not Explicitly Autobiographical, ‘Liberation’ Finds Playwright Bess Wohl Making Use of a Childhood ‘Infused With Second-Wave Feminism’

Can women have it all — that is, a rewarding career and a fulfilling personal life? It’s a question that’s posed relentlessly, with the assumption generally being that the personal life would involve a spouse or significant other and, optimally, children. By these standards, Bess Wohl, a Yale School of Drama-trained actress turned award-winning playwright, would seem to present a major success story. Married and with three kids, she has had plays produced on Broadway and off — among them the Tony-nominated “Grand Horizons” and the widely acclaimed “Small Mouth Sounds” and “Make Believe” — as well as in regional theater and London; she has also written for television.Of course, pulling all this off would not have been as easy, say, 50 years ago — which seems to be, at least in part, the premise for Ms. Wohl’s latest effort, “Liberation,” now having its world premiere off-Broadway. The script is subtitled “A Memory Play About Things I Don’t Remember,” but in a recent interview with the Brooklyn Rail, the playwright, who was born in the mid-1970s, was less evasive. “When I was a kid, my mom worked at Ms. Magazine, so I grew up infused with second-wave feminism,” Ms. Wohl noted. “As early as 4 years old, I marched in protests and parades. Those women were giants to me.” While she said she “didn’t want to write anything explicitly autobiographical,” Ms. Wohl added that she spoke with her mother and other women around the country about the “consciousness-raising groups” formed during that time.That last term, and the abbreviation “CR,” are sprinkled throughout “Liberation,” which is narrated by a character named Lizzie, a woman who appears to be in early middle age, with children. While Lizzie addresses the audience from the present, she spends much of the play in the past, stepping into the shoes of her mother, a journalist — who also calls herself Lizzie — with an international degree from an elite university.Charlie Thurston in ‘Liberation.’ Joan MarcusWe meet Lizzie the journalist in 1970, in Ohio, as she is forming a CR group with an eclectic assortment of women; periodically, Lizzie the narrator will interview them in the present day. There’s Susan, or “Susie Hurricane” as she introduces herself, a spitfire in her early 20s. Margie is at least three decades older, with a recently retired husband who won’t do any chores; she explains, “I need things to get me out of the house so I don’t stab him to death.”Celeste, a Black editor who’s working on a book focusing on women of her race, and Dora, a dainty young woman who thinks she’s joining a knitting circle at first but signs on anyway, are single. Isidora, who’s Italian, isn’t, but she assures the rest that she only married a man so she could get her green card.Ambivalence toward men in general and marriage in particular are implicit binding factors in this group — so much so that Lizzie the journalist doesn’t tell anyone about Bill, the guy she has been dating for two years, who will become her fiancé in the second act. Lizzie the narrator is desperate to know if they, especially her mother, have regrets, and to both honor and question their legacy.“A thing that they did, that they unquestionably did … why does it feel somehow like it’s all slipping away?” she asks.Ms. Wohl may be referring to any number of perceived setbacks in recent years; the overturning of Roe v. Wade comes immediately to mind. Suffice it to say that “Liberation” focuses less on the enormous progress that has been made in terms of how women can live, work, and love — in our country, certainly, and in much of the world — than on past injustices and remaining challenges.David Zinn’s neat, bright set design takes us to a basketball court in a recreational center, and near the end, the narrator, played with an easy warmth by Susannah Flood, concedes that there’s a girls’ team at her school — something that wasn’t available to the other characters in their day. Yet the present-day Lizzie then refers to the household chores awaiting her at home, among them washing dishes, one of Margie’s pet peeves. Whitney White nimbly directs a cast that includes such stage stalwarts as Betsy Aidem, winningly wry as Margie, and Kristolyn Lloyd, who captures Celeste’s dignity and vulnerability. Audrey Corsa’s Dora is adorably droll, while Adina Verson, known to fans of TV’s “Only Murders in the Building,” revels in Susan’s youthful irreverence. Irene Sofia Lucio exudes a more mature sass as Isidora, particularly in a scene that finds the ladies convening in their birthday suits.Charlie Thurston brings both earnestness and a hint of menace to Bill, who, not surprisingly, can come across as insensitive — though Ms. Wohl uses the character less to demonize men than to point out the considerable pressures and limited choices facing women a half century ago. Another character named Joanne, a Black housewife with four young sons, wittily played by musical theater veteran Kayla Davion, turns up to point out inadequacies within the women’s liberation movement.In the end, the preachier aspects of “Liberation” are mitigated both by humor and by Ms. Wohl’s acknowledgment of the many complications involved in her subject. “Every story is a brick in the wall,” her narrator finally tells the audience — and plainly, that wall is still very much under construction.

While Not Explicitly Autobiographical, ‘Liberation’ Finds Playwright Bess Wohl Making Use of a Childhood ‘Infused With Second-Wave Feminism’

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