Women’s Liberation. We all remember the term. This is a story about that movement, as it deals with so many of the issues from the 1970’s and 50 years later- identity, motherhood, work, and marriage to name a few. Lizzie is trying to figure out things regarding her late mother’s life in a women’s group as she goes back in time to the Ohio town where she lived in a most unique sort of memory play. I was looking forward to seeing “Liberation” as it had already won the Pulitzer Prize for best drama and the Tony award for best play in 2026. I loved the themes it was exploring but am sad to say it didn’t measure up to all the hoopla for me.
Lizzie (Juliana Zinkel) wants to understand her mother’s role in the liberation movement and imagines she has gone back in time and is interacting with six women as they meet in a consciousness-raising group on an empty, indoor basketball court. Each of the women has her own story and reason for being there and I loved them all.
Margie is a housewife who is unhappy with her do-nothing husband. Susan is a gay Jewish woman living in her car with her pet bird. Celeste is a Black feminist Radcliffe grad who has moved home to be with her sick mother. Isadora is an Italian immigrant who married a man to get her green card; she doesn’t like him. She is an aspiring film maker. Dora wandered into the meeting accidentally, thinking it was a knitting group, but stays to get advice on many subjects. It has all the ingredients for a fascinating play as Lizzie moves back and forth in time and we see her connection to all the issues women are confronted with.
There were many clever suggestions that the women make- an artificial womb so women wouldn’t be so tied to the baby, to avoid marriage, a world-wide strike of women so men realized how important women are. So, what was my problem?
Playwright Bess Wohl injects too much silly humor into her writing, and it undermines the gravity of her work. Director Taibi Magar didn’t provide much drama in the spitting out of the lines, and it often became tedious to listen to. I asked myself if I had problems with it because I was a man, but the woman who accompanied me said that she was underwhelmed by the show and didn’t particularly care for it. A woman we met at the reception after the show said it was good but not very good.
The subject of this play is important. It’s about liberation from men and the male society they created. And while all the actors were excellent, the story lines were all over the place and it was hard to stay focused. And it became even harder when it shifted times as well as when women characters played more than one role. But who am I? Certainly not one of the voters for the Pulitzer or the Tony awards.
“Liberation” by Bess Wohl at Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol, PA 19007, 215-785-0100, brstage.org, thru October 25, 2026
