Theatre in Review: Suffs (Music Box Theatre)

	Jenn Colella and members of the company. Photo: Joan Marcus

Maybe one of the awards-giving bodies should create a new category: Most Improved New Musical. In that event, Suffs would take the crown. When it opened at the Public Theater in 2022, this chronicle of the campaign for women's suffrage came off as a pale shadow of Hamilton, weighed down by exposition and surprisingly lacking in emotional punch. It felt, in a word, unfixable. But composer-librettist Shaina Taub is as indomitable as Alice Paul, the feminist firebrand she portrays onstage; she has not so much revised Suffs as she has given it the kiss of life. What was a lengthy historical slog has been transmuted into a witty, stirring entertainment that invites us to change the world for the better.

The changes start at the top; at the Public, Suffs began with a deadly high-concept number, "Watch Out for the Suffragette," which spread confusion, suggesting that we were in for an evening of satirical political cabaret. It now kicks off with the bouncy "Let Mother Vote," expertly delivered by Jenn Colella as Carrie Chapman Catt, leader of the feminist movement's old guard. It charmingly establishes how the go-slow tactics of Carrie's National American Women's Suffrage Association have resulted in six decades of stasis. Next, we are introduced to Alice Paul, fresh off her college's field hockey team and ready for revolution now, a fact established in the number "Finish the Fight." We're not even ten minutes in and the conflict is briskly, efficiently joined: Carrie, dismissing Alice with a light laugh, notes, "Men are only willing to consider our cause if we present it in a ladylike fashion." Alice, who has no use for Carrie and her suffrage cookbooks, responds by organizing a march on Washington that draws 200,000 participants, with lawyer and party girl Inez Milholland leading the charge on horseback.

Having sat through so many half-hearted musicals recently, it's a pleasure to be in the presence of Taub, who understands the demands of musical theatre storytelling. The revised opening reorients the entire show; pieces that stuck out awkwardly now seamlessly fit into the author's grand design. Furious about Black women being relegated to the back of the march, the journalist and social critic Ida B. Wells (Nikki M. James), delivers a scathing response in "Wait My Turn." (She bitterly asks if she should "simply put my sex before my race?"/Oh! Why don't I leave my skin at home and powder up my face?" Indeed, she crashes the event, taking a prominent place at the front of the line.) "If We Were Married" turns a legal argument between suffragist Doris Stevens and government official Dudley Malone into an unofficial courtship; "Ladies" establishes Woodrow Wilson as the movement's falsest fiend, incorporating a sequence in which Carrie and her associates are repeatedly rebuffed in trying to his approval. "Fire and Tea" features Alice and company publicly burning an effigy of Wilson even as Carrie takes tea with him, cutting a deal that ensures his support while sidelining the rabble-rousers. A lengthy sequence that sees many of the suffragists in jail has acquired a strong underlying tension, climaxing with Alice's solo "Insane" when it looks like she might be remanded to an asylum.

Leigh Silverman's direction has taken on a new sweep, showing the women -- strong personalities all -- riding the wave of history while struggling to hold together a movement marked by infighting. (More than once, an intense dispute is interrupted for a smiling photo op, followed by a resumption of hostilities.) Taub, whose performance at the Public seemed a little underpowered, makes Alice into a restless tactician, unable to rest for a second. (Her mantra, which spreads through the cast: "How will we do it when it's never been done?/How will we find a way where there isn't one?") Colella's Carrie is an imposing mix of sugar and steel, especially in "This Girl," her angry, internalized response to what she sees as Alice's presumptuous ways. James is a fiercely mordant presence as Ida, who knows that whatever happens, Black people will be left behind. Hannah Cruz is delightful as the flamboyant Inez, whose devotion to the cause ends in tragedy. Grace McLean's captivating, one-of-a-kind voice is a highlight of her shifty, slippery President Wilson. Emily Skinner seems like luxury casting as Alva Belmont, the wealthy divorcée who bankrolls Alice's plans. ("Every worthy cause needs a rich old broad.") Then she returns in Act II as the mother of a Tennessee state senator when the passage of the suffrage comes down to a vote in that august body, bringing it home with the showstopping "A Letter from Henry's Mother."

Also making solid impressions are Nadia Dandashi and Tsilala Brock, adorable as Doris and Dudley; Kim Blanck, mining the role of canny, capitalism-hating Ruza Wenclawska for dry humor; Anastacia McCleskey as Mary Church Terrell, Ida's friend and sparring partner; and Ally Bonino as Lucy Burns, Alice's staunchest, longest-lasting friend, who, once the vote is won, must inform her that she and their compatriots are moving on to new lives.

A new design team has given the show a fresh style. Riccardo Hernández's set draws on vintage Washington, DC architecture, using sliding wooden panels and Greek columns to keep up with the show's headlong pace. Lap Chi Chu's lighting is especially gorgeous in the ensemble numbers, creating some stunning silhouette effects. Paul Tazewell's costumes constitute a parade of attractively rendered, yet accurate, period styles, aided by Charles G. LaPointe's hair and wig designs. Jason Crystal provides the perfectly crisp and intelligible sound design the show needs; Michael Starobin's orchestrations and Taub's vocal arrangements are contributing factors, as is the cast's impeccable diction.

At the heart of Suffs is a vision that sees the suffrage movement, with all its frustrations and dangers, as essentially joyous. The characters are driven by an unshakeable sense that what they must achieve has profound implications for their mothers, sisters, and children to come. What they do will reverberate throughout time and yet there's always more to do. As the company sings in the knockout finale, "Keep Marching," "Don't forget that you're one of many others/On the journey every generation makes." It's a message that can't be repeated too often and, thanks to Taub and her collaborators, it gets through like a clarion call. --David Barbour