“The Woman Question”- that’s the title of the play. With such a title, it can be about so many things, I thought. In fact, this is a world premier of a play that takes place at the end of the 19th century as the Class 1894 arrives at the Women’s College of Pennsylvania, the first medical school exclusively for women. It is a diverse group with students coming from Japan, Syria, and Russia as well as a Native-American from Nebraska and an African American from Georgia. It promised to be most interesting to me as my daughter, born prematurely, was a patient there. Sadly, the play didn’t work for me for many reasons.
From the very beginning, there is a ton of exposition about the school. Many of the actors talked so fast that I didn’t get half the information they were trying to relate. I did enjoy the way they appeared on stage at first, climbing out of cabinets and coming through closet doors. And I loved that they called each other “Doctor.” I liked that they told each other, “you belong,” indirectly referring to the way men were dismissive of women as doctors.
But then, they started speaking rapidly again and I didn’t know what was going on most of the time. “Show me, don’t tell me,” I wanted to scream out. The best scene in the play was the class on dissection, where we watched them pull organs from a body that was portrayed by one of the students.
I asked my friend who sat beside me, and she understood less than I did. And at the act break, I asked a young man in the audience, and he told me that he zoned out often because he couldn’t hear and follow the tedious narration.
That is not to say I missed it all. I understood the backgrounds of most of those women who told how they arrived at the school. The one of the Indian woman (Avanthika Srinivasan), is most powerful. I followed the long discussion of their views on the female bodies they worked on, particularly regarding the illegality of abortion. And I loved when Melanye Finister and Suli Holum, the two mentors at the medical school, stepped out of character and told us what they went through during their pregnancies and deliveries… But every time the group of students got together to talk, they rambled on so fast that I didn’t follow most of their talk. And I rarely understood more than a few words of Sasha, the Russian woman. In addition, I thought the play wandered at times and tried to do too much. I can pick apart so much of the play but just let me say that the 2+ hours in the theater felt twice as long.
I always look forward to People’s Light productions, but this new show was not written well and was presented poorly. The playwright, Suki Holum, is a talented artist and this is an important subject. I hope she rewrites what they are calling this, a “docu-fantasy.”
“The Woman Question” by Suki Holum at People’s Light, 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, PA 19355, 610-644-3500, peopleslight.org Thru May 24, 2026
Philadelphia Theater Reviews by Frank Burd 