Shaina Taub’s historical musical “Suffs” lives up to its Tony-winning hype on its first national tour, currently playing at The Bushnell in Hartford, a hotbed of suffragist activity just over a century ago.
The show, which runs through Feb. 1, covers a key period of about seven years in the grueling quest to win women the right to vote. It both elevates and humanizes the leaders of the movement so that when they begin notching up small triumphs you feel their thrill. A rousing musical score helps. Taub wrote the entire show, music and lyrics and book, so “Suffs” has a fluidity and consistency and creativity you don’t get from works with too many collaborators.
“Suffs” easily elicits, and earns, comparisons to another historical musical about civil rights, humanitarian beliefs and the Constitution: “Hamilton,” which returned to The Bushnell just a few months ago. Like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hallowed musical, Taub’s “Suffs” is largely sung-through, is structured around repeated musical motifs and long bits that are like sung conversations. Like “Hamilton,” “Suffs” doesn’t want to tell a clean story that jettisons nuance and detail; its wants to show how complicated politics can be. Just as “Hamilton” is cast for maximum multiracial effect, “Suffs” has an entirely female cast portraying not just generations of women but a whole bunch of stuffy, insufferable men. It’s a wonderful conceit — women have the power and wield it magnificently.
One of the impressively grand backdrops and set pieces in the Broadway musical “Suffs,” at The Bushnell through Feb. 1 on its first national tour. (Joan Marcus)
The tunes, when they’re sustained, are catchy and memorable. The show starts with ragtime melodies but you are not allowed to worry long whether it will stay in the old-timey zone. There are modern arrangements, craftily layered harmonies and a variety of styles that fit the gravity, levity or romance of the scenes they are underscoring.
“Suffs” is mainly the story of Alice Paul, who devised the winning strategy to get the U.S. government to the concept of letting women vote. It’s not an easy road she takes. Paul has to buck the prevailing suffragist movement led by Carrie Chapman Catt, whose methods are more decorous and patient. Paul has to find folks to help her. She also has to directly confront and oppose the stalling tactics of United States President Woodrow Wilson, who is depicted as the king of condescension.
For her troubles, Paul is derided, demeaned, undermined, imprisoned and ignored. Taub expertly shows how impactful the women’s efforts were on a national level while retaining a sense of how the fight affected them as individuals. “We haven’t slept in weeks,” the organizers of the 1913 Women Suffrage Procession in Washington D.C. confess to a supposedly sympathetic acquaintance. “I have four children” is the cool response. “I haven’t slept in years.”
Danyel Fulton as Ida B. Wells (in blue), Maya Keleher as Alice Paul (at right) and fellow members of the cast of the national tour of “Suffs.” (Joan Marcus)
At one point, a character asks despondently if “change this big is too much to hope for.” Later, there’s the despairing question “How long must woman wait for liberty?” We know how this particularly story ends, but “Suffs” demonstrates how the victory was not total and how the struggle continues. Black journalist and activist Ida B. Wells makes regular appearances throughout the show to remind the Alice and her crew that not only will Black women not benefit from their efforts but that due to Jim Crow laws and other discriminatory practices, Black men still weren’t voting either. Almost as soon as the scene about passing the 20th amendment has passed, the suffragists begin talking about their next objective: an Equal Rights Amendment.
Taub played Alice Paul herself in the off-Broadway and Broadway productions of “Suffs.” On tour, the head suffragist is played by Maya Keleher, fondly remembered in Hartford as the daughter Natalie in TheaterWorks Hartford’s landmark 2017 production of the musical “Next to Normal.” Other faces in the cast familiar to Connecticut theatergoers are Marissa Hecker from the “Spamilton” tour at Playhouse on Park in 2019, Joyce Meimei Zheng from the world premiere of “The Far Country” at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2024 and a few Yale School of Drama graduates. The director of the “Suffs” tour (as well as the New York productions), Leigh Silverman, has worked on new musicals in the past at Goodspeed’s Festival of New Musicals and the now-defunct Yale Institute for Music Theatre.
Keleher makes Alice an agitator that’s easy to follow. She comes off as charismatic and genuinely determined. The speeches she sings are powerful cries for action. Monica Tulia Ramirez is a vision of larger-than-life leadership as one of Alice’s closest allies Inez Milholland. Marya Grandy brings poise and pithiness as well as one of the best singing voices in the show (which is saying a lot) to Carrie Chapman Catt, the suffrage leader who shares Alice’s goal but hopes to achieve it in a much less confrontational manner.
Among the many fascinating characters is a male adherent to the cause, legal specialist Dudley Malone, an advisor to Woodrow Wilson who resigns from his government job over disputes with the president over the suffrage issue. On Tuesday night, Malone was played with brightness and verve by the understudy for the role, Ariana Burks, who let the character contrast neatly with some of the more severe characters in Malone’s scenes. As Wilson, Jenny Ashman is suitably snide and supercilious, a great comic villain.
Award-winning musical about women’s fight for voting rights still resonates as tour comes to CT
“Suffs” is full of stirring subplots, sweet surprises and suspenseful plot twists. While Silverman’s staging is rigorously earthbound, going for human-sized realism and energy, there are also a few big splashy moments based around historic protests.
“Suffs” is the latest example of something The Bushnell does very well when balancing its Broadway season programming. This is a big tour that captures the scope and feel of a Broadway production that closed a year ago. The show will live on in different forms — college theaters will flock to it once they get a chance, small theater and community theaters will embrace it as well and a “Suffs Jr.” version is already in the works. But “Suffs” may never be seen again on the grand scale that it currently possesses at the 2,800-seat Bushnell, with massive backdrops and curtains and platforms and soap boxes, sharp choreography by Andrea Grody that encompasses the entire 17-person cast, costumes designed by Paul Tazewell that are both historically accurate and functional for the physically active actors and all the other perks of a big nationally touring production. Even the merchandise on sale in the lobby is on a high level, emblazoned with such powerful slogans/lyrics as “The young are at the gates,” “Now is the next time” and “Put the rage in suffrage.”
Seeing “Suffs” right now in Hartford is a special experience.
The national tour of “Suffs” runs through Feb. 1 at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford. Remaining performances are Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. $48.50-$203. bushnell.org.
