Suffs at the Peace Center

Behind every great woman there stands… more great women. Suffs, a musical recounting the battle to win women the right to vote in the United States, is revelatory in that regard, ensuring that even if you’ve heard of one or two of the leaders of the suffrage movement, there are probably a dozen more you need to know about.

Set chiefly from 1913 through the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, Suffs focuses on the work of Alice Paul (the energetic and powerfully voiced Maya Keleher). We meet her as a recent college graduate who urges Carrie Chapman Catt (Marya Grandy), longtime leader of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (founded in 1890 by Susan B. Anthony), to support her idea for a national march on Washington. The remainder of the show introduces the many impressive real-life women Alice attracts to her cause (which eventually becomes the National Woman’s Party) and allows us to witness some of the historic actions these women undertook to achieve their goal.

Marya Grandy (center) as Carrie Chapman Catt and other company members in the national tour of Suffs.

The musical isn’t entirely sung-through, but in the fashion of Rent, spoken dialogue is kept to a minimum and the program lists more than 30 songs and reprises. It begins strongly with Grandy’s rousing rendition of “Let Mother Vote” and includes both crowd-pleasing provocations (“G.A.B.,” the coyly titled drinking song that raucously embraces the epithet “great American bitch”), inspiring anthems (“The March,” “How Long,” “Keep Marching”), and deeply personal soliloquies such as “Wait My Turn,” sung by black journalist and activist Ida B. Wells (the dynamic Danyel Fulton). One of my favorites is “If We Were Married,” in which party secretary Doris Stevens (Livvy Marcus) lists all the ways marriage subjugates women, in a duet with her suitor, Dudley Field Malone, chief of staff to President Woodrow Wilson.

Danyel Fulton as Ida B. Wells and other company members in the national tour of Suffs.

The Suffs company is all women—17 onstage, plus understudies—so both Dudley and the president are played by women. In the performance we saw, Abigail Aziz (subbing for Brandi Porter) made for an excellent, sympathetic Dudley, while Jenny Ashman takes on the haughty Wilson, whose prejudices she plays broadly, earning laughs and winces at the same time. To cite Hamilton as one of Suff’s clear inspirations (minus the rapping), Wilson is this show’s King George—the out-of-touch antagonist who’s eventually overwhelmed by the tide of history.

Brandi Porter (left) as Dudley Malone and Jenny-Ashman as President Woodrow Wilson in the national tour of Suffs.

Suffs also resembles Hamilton in its creation: music, book, and lyrics are all by the show’s original star, in this case, Shaina Taub, who played Alice on Broadway and won two Tonys for her book and score. Unlike Hamilton, however, the music of Suffs is more timeless than contemporary, with ear-pleasing, lyric-driven melodies and frequent vocal crescendos to underscore emotions, similar to the works of Stephen Schwartz. You may think of Wicked more than once, both for its musical similarities and for the many heartfelt scenes bonding women friends.

Behind the scenes are more talented women, including director Leigh Sliverman and choreographer Andrea Grody. Onstage, the cast is uniformly stellar—I apologize for not praising each fine performer by name, but there are so many colorful and memorable characters, I’m sure audience members will discover their own favorites. To highlight just one more, there’s perhaps no more moving moment in the show than Laura Stracko’s appearance as a legislator’s parent to deliver “A Letter From Harry’s Mother”—a paean to all the unheralded, often forgotten actions of ordinary people who shape history.

Maya Keleher as Alice Paul in the national tour of Suffs.

The Peace Center audience was clearly won over to the cause, and I think it’s fair to say the show was particularly poignant and rousing to the women in the crowd. Men, like myself, may find themselves wanting to apologize for their predecessors—and, indeed, for some of our contemporaries.

Suffs runs through March 1 at the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina. For tickets and information, visit peacecenter.org.

Photos courtesy of the Peace Center.