If you’re a fan of playwright Bess Wohl, you know that it’s impossible to guess where she’ll go next. She’s written a sandwich-shop comedy (2014’s American Hero); the libretto for The Civilians’ 2015 Pretty Filthy, an inspired-by-real-life musical ode to the adult entertainment industry (Michael Friedman wrote the score); 2016’s Small Mouth Sounds, a play that relies on pauses, gaps, and silences rather than dialogue, arguably a writer’s most powerful tool; the 2020 laugh-out-loud Broadway comedy Grand Horizons, which featured senior citizens sexting and extolling the virtues of vibrators between plates of pot roast.
Her new play—the ambitious, slightly overstuffed Liberation, which just opened off-Broadway at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre—continues her pattern of unpredictability: It’s a memory play of sorts, set largely in the 1970s in a basement basketball court of an Ohio rec center. (David Zinn’s scenic design is period perfection, down to the janky metal folding chairs; you can almost hear the buzzers and smell the stale sweat socks.)
“This is a play about my mother. For my mother,” explains Lizzie, played by Susannah Flood, after reassuring the audience that they’re not in store for a butt-busting epic runtime. (“Surely you’ve noticed all of those six hour, eight hour, ten hour plays are by men with no children? A woman with children would never. Could never. You know I’m right.”) But really…it’s about her mother, her friends—“her beautiful friends”—and the consciousness-raising group they formed, the bond they built, and what they fought for. “So why does it feel like it’s somehow all slipping away? And how do we get it back?” Lizzie wonders. Wohl leans too hard on fourth wall–breaking commentary throughout the play, but Flood, who played a grown-up Gen X latchkey kid in Wohl’s Make Believe and starred in Roundabout’s recent production of Meghan Kennedy’s The Counter, is so awkwardly endearing that you almost don’t mind.
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Lizzie takes on the role of her mother, a journalist who covers obituaries and weddings. “I had to fight to get obituaries,” she laments. “And every day, I’m just hoping that someone will die in an interesting way so I’ll have something to write about.” There’s also Susie, aka Susie Hurricane (Adina Verson)—“and no, that’s not my legal name, but it is my real name”—who currently lives in her car with her bird; Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd), back in Ohio from New York to care for her mom; housewife Margie (Betsy Aidem), whose husband is retired—“I need things to get me out of the house so I don’t stab him to death”; Isidora (Irene Sofia Lucio), a filmmaker working as a PA (“coffee girl, you know”) at the local news, who has “the husband but really only for the green card”; and Dora (Audrey Corsa), who misread the flyer and thought she was joining a knitting circle.
These are warm, wonderful, whip-smart women; it’s easy to see why Wohl wanted to write about them. (Isadora on growing up in a convent: “Those nuns were monsters, but at least they were women in leadership positions.”) So when Bill (Charlie Thurston), Lizzie’s future father, comes into the picture, we can’t help but feel a bit cheated. Granted, Lizzie is wrestling with what their marriage represented—her mom giving up her life for the sake of tradition. But it robs us of precious minutes with these, to borrow a phrase from Wendy Wasserstein, uncommon women. We want to hear more about Dora, who’s climbing the corporate ladder against all odds. About Susie, who manages to move out of her car. About Margie, who somehow keeps herself from stabbing her husband. About Joanne (Kayla Davion), who’s not part of the group—she’s just there looking for her son’s backpack!—but whose scene with Celeste could be expanded into a play of its own. “Every story is a brick in the wall,” says Lizzie. The wall isn’t finished. Not by a long shot.
Liberation opened Feb. 20, 2025, at the Laura Pels Theatre and runs through March 30. Tickets and information: roundabouttheatre.org
