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- [00:00]
Grow Therapy / MeUndies Advertiser
Grief doesn't keep a calendar. Anxiety doesn't clock out after five, Depression doesn't care if it's your busy season, but support can still fit into your life. With Grow, you can find a therapist who meets you where you are. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in person sessions. You can search by insurance provider, specialty treatment methods and more to find a therapist who works for you. And if it's not the right fit, switching is easy. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. Find therapy on your time, evenings, weekends and Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. Whatever challenges you're facing, GrowTherapy is here to help. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com acast today to get started. That's GrowthTherapy. Do.
- [01:02]
Growtherapy.Com acast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan hey, it's.
- [01:09]
Marc Maron
Marc Maron from WTF here to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. And I'm sure the reason you're listening to this podcast right now is because you chose it well. Choose Progressives Name your price tool and you could find insurance options that fit your budget. So so you can pick the best one for your situation. Who doesn't like choice? Try it@progressive.com and now some legal info. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
- [01:42]
Grow Therapy / MeUndies Advertiser
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- [02:25]
Mickey Jo
So in solidarity with this play, I have decided to present this particular review to you tastefully nude. Don't worry, I'm joking. For those of you listening on podcast platforms, that was a visual punchline. I need you to entirely understand that I was kidding. I am in fact wearing show merch, as I almost always am. And also, what a wildly ignorant misunderstanding of the message of the play. Would it be for me to decide to do that. You know what? Forget I even said it. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I recently travelled to New York as a professional theatre critic and content creator to go and see as many Broadway and Off Broadway shows as possible. And while I was there I saw Liberation, currently playing at the James L. Jones Theatre. This, I am very happy to tell you, is the best play I saw during my entire two week trip and I am very eager to tell you about it today. Now, Liberation, written by Bess Wall, originally premiered Off Broadway at the Laura Pell's Theatre Roundabouts Off Broadway, during which time I heard about it within the context of this Off Broadway play with a scene in which the entire female company are nude. As such, this is one of a few productions utilizing yonder pouches. These are little pockets that you secure your mobile phones into for the duration of the play. They are locked, they are unlocked for you by the front of house team at the end. It's all done very efficiently. But what I really want is for the conversation around Liberation and everyone's sort of casual understanding of what this is before having seen it, to move beyond the the nudity of this moment. Because for the most part, when you see that on stage, certainly when you go to Studio Seaview and see it in Prince F and similarly your phone is locked away into a yonder pouch. Oh, understudy slips falling left, right and center. Excuse me. Usually on stage, nudity would be framed in something of a romantic context. I would call it an amorous context in my very uptight British way. But this isn't. This is a very powerful scene of feminine community and connection in the midst of a very powerful play about those ideas as well as so much today, I want to talk to you about the exceptional writing, the powerhouse performances, and the extraordinary framing device that answered so many questions that I've been ruminating on for a very long time. So buckle up for my full review of Liberation. Now, if you have seen this play already, as always, I would love to know what you thought in the comments section down below, whether you've seen it off or on Broadway. And of course, if you enjoy listening to what I have to say and you would like to hear more of my reviews, feel free to subscribe. Feel free to go find me on podcast platforms and follow me over there. In the meantime, if you Here is what I thought of my favourite new Broadway play, Liberation.
- [05:07]
So what is Liberation? What is this play talking about? This has been written by Bess Wall, and in the immediate moments of its commencement, we meet a character on stage who is a placeholder for her, who is portrayed by Susannah Flood, but who introduces herself to us, the audience, as the playwright. And this is a part of a framing device that feels so casual and yet is so ingenious for multiple different reasons. There's so many aspects of this that I want to talk to you about, and arguably I should walk you through the vague plot of the thing first, but it's sort of inseparable. In order to talk about the plot, I have to talk to you about the way that the plot is framed because of what this is conceptually. This is Bess the playwright, imagining her mother's life as a feminist in the 1970s, attending meetings of a group, a consciousness raising group, that she had established among local women in Ohio. An intersectional group of women, different races, different cultural backgrounds, different sexualities, different stances on different issues within the bigger idea of women's liberation and feminism. A conversation which, even within the context of their lifetimes, had become fatiguing in. In its prolonged struggle, in its prolonged challenges, and one which in many ways and on many different frontiers, increasingly continues to be so in 2025. Which is one of the reasons why the play's framing device is so. So brilliant. Because to my mind, while it's interesting enough to exhibit this as a period piece and re examine this decade, you know, more than 50 years ago, there's sort of little point in doing it if it isn't going to be brought powerfully into conversation with we are today. And either you do that by articulating the parallels between then and now, or you do it more explicitly, which is what this is empowered to do by way of this framing device. So in this little brief introductory sort of foreword of a theatrical conversation, we are introduced to the character who is going to anchor us throughout all of the examination which will follow, which, once we get into it, will start to feel like a more traditionally structured narrative. Although it isn't. We learn in the second act that it isn't. What this immediate moment of narration does is takes us as an audience and focuses our perspective at the vantage point of its direction. She tells us, I am looking at it from this perspective. And so we all do inherently, by extension as well, we are seeing all of this through the eyes of the playwright, which is something that I think in a lot of writing and a Lot of theatre and direction you hope to achieve by the end of the thing, to be able to. To sort of instruct all of us from the beginning. This is how we're looking at this, by the way. And this is the context of what's going to happen right now. Rather than just, you know, you could do a different version of this in which you just stage these scenes and then at the end you find out that this central character was the playwright's mother. And then it's like a reveal moment. I think this is better because also, and this is the thing that I've been thinking about for months, maybe years, there are certain pieces of theatre where I think if I hadn't read the director's note or the playwright's note beforehand, I would have taken something entirely different away from it. But once you can, figuratively speaking, enter into conversation with the creators of the piece, the writers of the piece, and understand what it is that they are exploring or hoping to articulate, then I think it allows you to see it from the ideal perspective. At the same time, a really great place should be able to articulate that without needing to. To guide the hand of the audience in the same way. But I just think there's something. And for what it's worth to draw another parallel, Prince F at Studio Seaview is currently doing this as well, because that also has not only an introductory moment that talks about the inspiration for the play and the ideas that it's considering, but also a handful of monologue moments throughout that break away from the action of the main narrative, for the company members to reflect on their attachment to the story emotionally. And the fact that Liberation is able to, in such an easygoing premise, articulate its perspective on itself, I think is so valuable and I think allows it to say so much more so quickly. It also means, and this is very valuable, that as soon as these women enter and sit down, as soon as they have this sort of rock star entrance, when they walk on stage for the first time and we meet all of the other players, all of the other characters from. From this era, we immediately know what we're looking at, and we immediately know where we're going with it as well. To a certain extent, in some contexts, this would sound like a spoiler. This would sound like pulling the rug from underneath, but it doesn't. It only fuels it with more power and possibility. And it's very witty and it puts us entirely at ease when this performer comes out on stage and says, hi, everybody. Hi. I guess they took your phones Ha. And everyone who very possibly is still thinking about that, because it's not even now particularly usual for that to happen when you arrive to the theater. And we're all getting more and more connected to and dependent on our phones for a handful of legitimate reasons. But it's a good and probably necessary, I think, defusing of initial tension before she goes on to Flag. And the people who hate trigger warnings and content advisories when they go to the theater or the cinema are going to absolutely hate this because she tells us how long the thing is going to be for anyone who might have something else they need to go and do that afternoon. Which sounds frivolous, but she then explains that, you know, she has young kids as a character, as the playwright, as whoever she is representing at this point, she has kids and childcare that she needs to go and attend to before wittily pointing out that all of the famously epic, you know, five hour and two part plays were probably written by men who didn't have child care responsibilities. That being, you know, just a little amuse bouche for the meal of a conversation that we are going to be served in liberation. And the structure of the thing is also indicative of the content because inherently the idea of this play is an intergenerational conversation that can't happen. That can only happen through theatre as this sort of a Ouija board kind of a medium for her to feel connected to her mother, who has since passed away, with whom she never really had this kind of a meaningful conversation about her life, about her stance on her own female identity and her rights and everything she wanted to achieve leave before she had passed away. And so this dual generational approach in this story, where we meet her first as herself before she then spends the majority of the play portraying her mother, is a really interesting thing, I think. Let's talk a little bit more about the writing as well as the creative choices that have gone into telling the story on stage.
- [12:07]
So every scene depicted within the play, once we actually enter into. Into the narrative, is during one of these meetings of this group that has been established by the playwright's mother. We see their very first meeting. The room is cold. Everyone is a little indifferent. There are, you know, different understandings as to exactly what this might be. Someone had arrived by mistake. People are hoping that it might have a certain energy. People are figuring out exactly what their role is in it, whether they're going to get on with these other individuals. Some people are bringing the baggage of having attended former women's liberation groups or civil Rights groups. And so you have this entire mixture of women with different perspectives on the movement and what that means to them and, you know, the frontiers of their everyday lives in which they still face challenges and misogyny and inequality. For example, there is Margie, who has spent her entire life as a housewife. Now her kids are grown, she lives in the home alone with her husband, where it occurs to her by the day how many things she takes responsibility for in order to make his life easy and comfortable, and the extent to which he wouldn't be able to cope or survive in her absence. Unfortunately, because of the way that society then was, she would also struggle in his absence, which is what is preventing her from getting a divorce. Should that be something that she decides that she wants to do because she doesn't have a bank account in her name? Then you have a younger woman named Dora who is growing frustrated in her place of employment because men who aren't as good at their jobs as she is are being promoted above her. And while there is some conversation even within this group about her ability to get by on her looks or utilize a certain amount of guile and charm in order to further her position professionally and also in the world, this is also a source of frustration and resentment for her. And also one of the threads in the stitching of this group and this little community that has come together, that will be pulled at gradually as the whole thing maybe starts to shift a little bit. Another of which is our central character of Lizzie, the organizer, the mother of the playwright, who she knew in her lifetime to be a very different kind of woman. The whole reason why she is doing this is she is trying to reconnect to and understand the young, determined, passionate woman that her mother was. And she initially insists that she is not a leader, that the group does not have a leader. But she is very often a facilitator of dialogue. And she does emerge with some strong feelings about certain decisions that ought to be made, certain plans and practices that she, as a journalist, doesn't necessarily feel comfortable participating in when they prove a little too provocative. Though ultimately, the most controversial thing that she will go on to do is. Is become romantically linked to a young man who is portrayed mostly during the second act of the play. His name is Bill. And we see some scenes from his courtship with Lizzie, the early moments of their relationship, the beginnings of, you know, something a little bit more serious, the prospect of them potentially getting married and having a more traditional family set up. Something which she has been vehemently and repeatedly warned against by the married women of the group who make a compelling case for it. It must be, and you may be wondering at this point, if this man is the father of the narrator character who we have met at the beginning, best wall, essentially. And the answer is yes. Which is the reason why she does not play those romantic scenes with the actor representing her father, even though no one literally is the person. Because she's not actually the playwright, he's not actually her father. In the context of what we're seeing, and for us to trust and understand it, that would still be icky. And so it's at this moment that we are encouraged to recall the play's inherently sort of fantastical quality, that we are channeling the memories of these some departed individuals and using the power of theatre in order to recall possible scenes that may have taken place, imagined conversations from an earlier time, from decades past. And so there's no reason that she has to play this scene with her father. At which point she asks if anyone in the auditorium is willing to do it. And another member of the company volunteers, as she hasn't played a member of the group. She played a mother who walked on looking for her son's lost backpack in the gymnasium that they're in. She quips that she hasn't had all that much to do so far. And so goes on to play Lizzie in these scenes so that the character of Bess can watch everything from flirtation to strange debate between the two young people who would go on to become her parents. Her name is Joanne. She's one of the two black women in the play. And this is not the last time we are going to meet her, because there is another scene that brings those two into conversation, the other being a character named Celeste. Celeste is living in Ohio for longer than she would like to be because she is taking care of her ailing mother. And she offers a great many thoughtful and profound insights on the various topics that are discussed throughout the play. She also forges some very interesting relationships with other women in the group. But it's this standoff which is the most intriguing. And it plays out like a very deliberate acknowledgment of the play's own shortcomings. There's some dialogue to suggest that this is, well, as well as a shortcoming of traditional feminist movements and groups such as these to appropriately advocate for the separate and simultaneous advancement of black women. Another recent feminist story on Broadway, Suffs the Musical, devoted a fair amount of time to this as well. And this scene between the two of them is so electrifying. And this exchange that they have throughout the play, we are encouraged to consider topics of shared frustration and indignation from two different places. Though by and large, these women all ultimately want the same or very similar things, they can be fiercely opposed on individual topics and the way in which that ought to be achieved. When trying to write anything inherently authentic that also encompasses a lot of different perspectives, I think it's important to create space like this and to address the limitations of your own understanding because playwrights and theatre makers are encouraged to write what they know and intimately. But how authentically, how accurately can you really speak to another human being's experience? But then if you don't write that scene, if you don't write that debate between those characters, then they're just, they have no seat at the table. They have no voice in that conversation whatsoever. There are a couple more characters who complete the group. One of them is named Susan, an unapologetically unique individual who at the time we first meet her, is living in her car, as well as the passionate and outspoken Isadora. She is married, but only for a green card. She has been part of groups previously. She is Sicilian and boldly opinionated and explosive catalyst for conversation, of which there is plenty. Occasionally the dialogue is a fast paced back and forth. Occasionally it's a heartbreaking monologue as we really carefully examine the lives of these individual women as they were. Betsy, Adam as Margie gets a lot of this gets some of the most poignant moments of reflection on her own existence and you know, the years, the decades that she has given to her family, to the planet, to her husband.
- [19:42]
Grow Therapy / MeUndies Advertiser
You know you've reached peak couple energy when your undies match. Meundies Match Me has you both covered literally in super soft, ultra modal undies, socks, PJs and loungewear. Festive prints? Check. Cozy vibes? Double check. And right now, it's deal season. Get up to 50% off site wide for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Take your couple game to the next level with Meundies Match Me. To get deals up to 50% off, go to Meundies.com acast Enter promo code acast that's Meundies.com acast code acast grief doesn't keep a calendar. Anxiety doesn't clock out after five. Depression doesn't care if it's your busy season. But support can still fit into your life. With Grow, you can find a therapist who meets you where you are. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in person sessions. You can search by insurance provider, specialty treatment methods, and more to find a therapist who works for you. And if it's not the right fit, switching is easy. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. Find therapy on your time, evenings, weekends, and Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. Whatever challenges you're facing, Growth Therapy is here to help. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com acast today to get started. That's growththerapy.com acast growtherapy.com acasta availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
- [21:39]
Mickey Jo
And as the player's gaining momentum, the structure is reasonably straightforward. We have this introductory scene where they are all initially getting to know each other. We can learn about these characters effortlessly, but then we begin to accelerate slightly and we skip over certain chapters. We pick up and put down wherever it is that we need to in order to gain a sort of an overview of what exactly this group is was. It's like someone scanning through history books, pausing on this first photo of a group of women really drinking it all in and then starting to skim through as you feel like you're understanding it more and more. Another of the tools for understanding that our playwright, narrator, character has is interview moments with some of the women who are still alive. And there's a shift in staging and lighting in order to convey to us that that's what's happening. The actresses also adopt a different posture and a different voice as they're playing much older versions of the same characters. There's also something they with the giant scoreboard on the wall at the back because they're like on a basketball court. And I know that this thing has a name, this thing that keeps the scores, but you're gonna have to forgive the lack of understanding that I have of the high school sports and all things related. But it just starts to tick up like an active recording or playback during those very brief conversations that she has with the women now reflecting on like, did that really happen? Did you really say that? Is that really how that was? And you gain an awful lot not just by hearing all of the different perspectives of those women at the time, but also by hearing what it is that they then think of them some 50 years later. Here's something I find really interesting about the structure of the writing, because initially so many of the scenes are focused within group conversations. And on the days that big revelations emerged, or when they were deciding whether or not they were going to go and march or protest, or on the day when, as they had read in a feminist magazine of the time, they decided to all come and disrobe and sit together nude. Like I said, this is a scene at the top of the second act. They go around in a circle and they all talk about parts of their own body, something that they like about themselves and something that they don't, which they reassure each other, is utterly meaningful and important, even if it feels vain or superficial. But this conversation, this beautiful conversation, while this company of women sit in a semicircle nude on stage before a multi tier theatrical audience, gives way to these profoundly honest reflections on life. As you have the character of an older woman talking about the sort of pride she has in a body that still works, that still carries her, her through the world, something that she immediately says the younger women around her won't be able to understand. You have a black woman talking about her entire self and existing within this body and everything that that has meant for her and the way in which she is perceived by the world and the woman that that has made her. They talk about perceptions of themselves, other people's as well as their own. And it's a fascinating, beautiful scene that enduringly, afterwards, I just felt sort of grateful for. It felt like a real privilege as an audience member to have had the opportunity to bear witness to that level of emotional honesty within the writing, but also within the performances to play the scene as well. But as we move beyond that, what I think is really interesting about the way this play has been written is that it isn't entirely focused on conversations within the meetings, but increasingly we start to look at moments that happen immediately before or or after them. The moments when a couple of people have arrived early and they have a private sidebar conversation that goes to a slightly more personal place. They say something that's a little bit more provocative, a little bit surprising. There are some confrontations, there are some confessions. And not only does this offer us theatrical variety, because it's not constantly, you know, this campfire of the same people sitting in a semicircle the entire time, but it also pulls back the curtains a little bit. It on the lives of all of these women, offering us these intriguing little glimpses. And Whitney White's direction of this entire play is so perfectly paced, it's so expertly done, it's so laser focused on the emotional intent and necessity of every single scene. We are drawn to the heart of each individual character on Stage as though they were being separately spotlit. It's this beautiful marriage of writing and direction where it is empowered to just feel like such truth. Even though we're repeatedly told that what we're watching is a theatrical conjuring of an imagined memory, there's this extraordinary honesty to it because of the way that it's been staged, also because of the way that it's being performed. I will tell you about these performances. Before I do, I want to talk about the set design as well as, oh, the period costumes and the wigs. Gorgeous, stunning. I love this era aesthetically, but you also get character inherently from each of them because they have grown up in different places in different eras. You see all of their different cultures, their different identities brought together on stage. At a glance, it's a real mismatch of individuals. Queen Jean is credited with the costume design, of course. Nakia Mathis is credited with the hair and wig design. Not relevant to this section. But I do want to acknowledge Kelsey Rainwater as the intimacy director, which I think is especially important in this production. I can only imagine during that rehearsal process and David Zinn's set design. I'm always fascinated by these enormous structures of sets that are just these fully realistic, you know, three entire walls. This full room with what look like massive cinder block brick walls. This, like, high school building gymnasium. I am astounded as to how they even build those, the way that they light them. I love the corridor entrance and the single double doors, the only means by which they are entering or exiting this room within the context of the play. And a nice subtle detail, all of the various different accomplishments of the high school boys basketball team on the back wall as well. Just to really frame the conversation that's being had about women's liberation down in the front, a conversation being had by a rather extraordinary company. Let me finish by telling you about these.
- [28:07]
Marc Maron
Hey, it's Marc Maron from wtf here to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. And I'm sure the reason you're listening to this podcast right now is because you chose it well. Choose Progressive's name your price tool and you could find insurance options that fit your budget. So you can pick the best one for your situation. Who doesn't like choice? Try it@progressive.com and now some legal info. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match, limited by state law. Not available in all states.
- [28:41]
Grow Therapy / MeUndies Advertiser
Grief doesn't keep a calendar. Anxiety doesn't clock out after five. Depression doesn't care if it's your busy season, but support can still fit into your life. With Grow, you can find a therapist who meets you where you are. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in person sessions. You can search by insurance provider, specialty treatment methods and more to find a therapist who works for you. And if it's not the right fit, switching is easy. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. Find therapy on your time, evenings, weekends, and Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. Whatever challenges you're facing, GrowTherapy is here to help. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com acast today to get started. That's growththerapy.com acast growtherapy.com acast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
- [29:57]
Mickey Jo
So Susannah Flood earns our hearts very, very quickly as Lizzie and I guess also as Bess in those introductory moments. And because we never really forget about meeting her in that context and because she tells us from the beginning that she is going to be playing her mom. There's something about watching her on stage and wondering whether she is meant to be entirely disappearing into this character or at all times portraying her and also reacting to everything that's happening around her as if she's hearing it for the first time. Like it's someone who has taken a potion and gone back in time to live inside the body body of their parent. Kind of back to the future style and they're trying to pass it off convincingly, but also they're like taking everything in that they are hearing as they're seeing younger versions of women who they've only ever met decades older, learning things that they had never previously realized or perhaps considered about their parent. And there are so many great moments when you can just watch her watching things, especially when her parents are portrayed separately to her on stage and she is just staring wide eyed at the various conversations that they have. Charlie Thurston plays the man who would become her father, Bill. He has a sort of inherently incomplete arc because we only meet him at these essential turning points and there's a real chunk of their relationship missing from the middle. But he does good work in these moments of necessity. And I do also think that it's important that men have some kind of a role and a voice in women's stories. This does a really fantastic job in depicting 1970s feminism in a way that is so widely intersectional now I have picked up the falling understudies slip because there were actually two understudies during the performance that I saw. So the role of Isadora the Sicilian was played at this performance by Leanne Hutchison. And, oh, my gosh, she was remarkable. Just utterly fantastic. A standout for me, even. And it's a really snazzy part once we're really cooking with gas in these conversations, once everyone's warmed up a little bit. She is so outspoken. She is so confident. She is the fluorescent light bulb in the middle of the room. And she did a great job at that. She was wonderful. The other understudy performance was by Kedren Spencer as Joanne. Say it with me. Joanne. And not Susan, the mother looking for her son's backpack, who then plays Lizzie in the romantic scenes with her father, who has the confrontation with Celeste. And as she portrays these characters, what's so different for Lizzie? In many ways, a naive, younger white woman to Joanne, a woman entirely cognizant of what this group is, equally cognizant of the fact that she does not want to join it, that she does not see a place for herself in that community. And so interesting to see the difference in the way that she defends her own stance as each of these characters, but also show the similarity, these two very different women who are coming from very different places towards the same idea. And because she gets to play both of them as the same performer, the duality of that is so fascinating, the subtle differences in what she plays. Then you have Audrey Corser and Adina Verzon, who each realize such fully dimensional characters with their own grievances, their own entirely unique personalities, independent, hidden from perhaps the way that they are depicted to us in their introductory moments. Each has the capacity to surprise us. What I'm really building towards, though, are what I think are the two standout performances of the show who each have just spectacularly written material. They are Crystalline Lloyd as Celeste, and the always remarkable Betsy Adam as Margie. Crystalline carries such attention in the early scenes of the this play, which eventually effervesces into this emotional outpouring, this confession of indecision. She is, in so many ways in her life being pulled between two different feelings. There are facets of her identity separate to her race, that she is still coming to terms with the idea of revealing to the world. She has what seems like a very destabilizing confrontation with another black woman who challenges her on her position and on her consideration of her own rights. She has this staggeringly complex heart wrenching monologue about grief when she builds towards this brave and devastatingly sorrowful confession that all she is doing is waiting for her mother to die. But please, dear God, don't let her die. And she is stuck in that complex, contradictory place which she plays just so, so thoughtfully. Finally, Betsy Adam as Marchie, who initially seems to us perhaps this chain smoking, experienced, unsurprised older woman who is doing this because it gives her occupation, it's something in her schedule, it's a reason for her to get out of the house. But what we discover about her, and I think what she discovers about herself, is perhaps the most sorrowful examination of women's liberation. Arriving years too late. Because as they talk about changes that they are trying to achieve, things that they are advocating for and fighting for and striving to see realized within their lifetimes, she brings the perspective of a woman who has already not only resigned herself to years of domestic servitude and traditional marriage with all of its expectations, but who has lived that already, who is looking back on the impossibility of all of this for her in the rear view mirror, realized in the play by some stunning bits of dialogue. There is one monologue in which she talks about writing down a list of all of the different things that she is responsible for in order that her husband might read this and of his own volition, begin to share some responsibility. But there's another moment as well, and this is a little special. It's not much of a spoiler to tell you, just that it happens. But if you don't want to know, you can skip to the final section of this review. Because once more, there is something of a theatrically magical metamorphosis. And as the voice of the playwright reflects on a certain lack of fulfillment through this imagined thought experiment, Margie agrees to take on the role of her mother so that she can have with her the conversation that she never got to. As you know, she asks all of the difficult questions about whether she would have been happier, more fulfilled, had the chance to realize her aspirations and ambitions had her daughter not been born. The answers to which I think are deeply honest and perhaps cathartic, and which really fastens the whole thing with a meaningful conclusion of this powerful and raw and truthful intergenerational dialogue.
- [36:50]
And coming out of that last thought, intergenerational dialogue is the thing that I really hope that this play can. Can foster. If young women go to see this and go and start conversations with their mothers, their grandmothers, their older female relatives, if this can broker more of a sense of shared understanding between children and parents and generations. I think that's an exceptionally powerful thing for it to be able to do. I would like for more people to go and see this on Broadway, because feminism and, you know, women's stories, stories labeled as such, are a hard thing to market and sell. They just are. This is in so many ways important. It's an important story about humanity beyond, you know, the very real dialogue about women's liberation and ongoing challenges that endure that are as they were then. Beyond all of that, I think there is much for everyone to take away, regardless of their gender, about this consideration of the lives that your parents may have led and this reflection on a different, different time. But mostly what I think this player is going to do once you get your phones back unlocked out of the yonder pouches, is make you want to call your mother. And once you have finished that phone conversation, call three friends and tell them how great Liberation is on Broadway. If you have seen it, share your thoughts in the comments section down below. Tell a friend this play in no uncertain terms, needs support. It needs people to advocate for it. It is smart, brilliant, theatrically exciting writing. I've said honest and meaningful so, so many times, but they are key adjectives in talking about this fantastic play. If you haven't seen it yet, if you have the means to do so, I encourage you to do so. It's triumphant. Which concludes my thoughts about the play Liberation on Broadway. I hope you enjoyed listening to this review. If you did, I have several more that you may not have listened to already. Go and check those out or stay tuned for more coming soon as there always, always are. Hit subscribe, turn on notifications, then YouTube will let you know. Every time I I have shared a new video or go follow me on podcast platforms. And in the spirit of the messaging, on the T shirt that I'm currently wearing from the play Liberation, which for podcast listeners says Let her speak. Go and check out reviews of this play as well as plenty of other New York and US Theatre from the brilliant Kate Reinking, from Ashley Hufford, from Grace Walker. You can find those three on TikTok and Instagram. I will link as many reviews as I can find below because while I do appreciate you listening to what I have to say about this play, I think there's a lot more that women can articulate about what this means to them. On which note, I hope, as always, that everyone is staying truly safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.
- [39:39]
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