Rochester prides itself on being the home of Susan B. Anthony — but before you get your hopes up, you should know that the city’s favorite local suffragist is not a character in “Suffs.” While she is alluded to, the events of this touring Tony-award winning musical take place years after Anthony’s 1906 death, starting in 1913 and leading up to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Hopefully that won’t dissuade those interested in women’s rights history from seeing “Suffs,” which is on tour as part of the RBTL season at West Herr Auditorium Theatre through June 14.
Riding the coattails of “Hamilton” and primed for educational tie-ins, “Suffs” is a two-and-a-half hour, largely sung-through musical portraying American figures who are less mythologized than the Founding Fathers, including Alice Paul and Ida B. Wells. The show has the heart and broad pop accessibility of period shows like “Les Misérables” and “Newsies,” with just enough historical intrigue to make audiences pull up Wikipedia during intermission to fact check.
The show opens with a 1913 speech by the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Carrie Chapman Catt (played with palpable conviction by Marya Grandy) leads a pleasantly Golden Age musical-sounding tune, “Let Mother Vote,” making the conservative case for suffrage: a woman’s vote means more support for her husband’s preferred candidate. “We’ll still be loyal wives / We won’t disrupt your lives,” they promise.
Alice Paul (an animated Maya Keleher, whose body language includes so much leaning one wonders if she was trying to reference Sheryl Sandberg) wants a disruption. Change must be demanded: “We need a march!” Her contemporary Broadway “I want” power ballad “Finish the Fight” sets the tone, musically, for the rest of the show.
The limits of Paul’s white feminist activism are called out by Ida B. Wells (played on opening night by understudy Abigail Aziz, a recent college grad who performs with wise clarity), setting up one of the main tensions of the show. Wells is then foiled by incremental change endorser Mary Church Terrell (a sympathetic Trisha Jeffrey). All four suffragists agree change is needed, but disagree on how best to see it through. Do you negotiate politely over tea or burn the system down? Who gets pushed to the side in the fight for justice? How do you convince the elected president to support democracy for all?
“Suffs,” which premiered on Broadway in 2024 with Hilary Clinton as one of its producers, is undeniably aware of the current political moment, at times even reliant upon it for emotional resonance. Mentions of “crooked kings” and pleas about the importance of voting could double as signs at No Kings protests. Repeated lyrics are generic enough (“How will we do it when it’s never been done?”) to feel applicable to a variety of social struggles.
This piece is one of those rare musicals where the book, music and lyrics are all written by the same person, in this case — even more rare — a woman, Shaina Traub. (She also starred in the show on Broadway.) It’s an impressive feat that won Traub two Tony Awards for her book and score. While the melodies are not ear worm-catchy, the songs serviceably carry along the plot and convey a lot of history, plus a little character development, in a palatable and lively way.
The all-female cast elevates the material, performing with intensity and power. Monica Tulia Ramirez stands out as the fiercely determined Inez Milholland, turning a repeated plea to vote into a moment of deep musical pathos. While the show centers the women and their dynamics, a few of the comedic side characters are men, most notably President Woodrow Wilson (a buffoonish Jenny Ashman).
The convention of women playing men makes sense for a piece about female empowerment, although more consideration could have been put into the roles that were cast colorblind. For a show that wants to address white supremacy in the suffrage movement, it’s an odd choice to expect the audience to ignore a Black woman’s race while she unironically plays a naïve White House staff member waking up to inequality in America (no shade to Brandi Porter, who is winning as the bumbling love interest Dudley Malone).
“Suffs” is often entertaining, but lacks the teeth of comparable historical musicals like “Hamilton” and “Ragtime.” The show so earnestly wants to inspire, centering women who nevertheless persist amidst violence in the street, illness, grief, incarceration and even a hunger strike. But it’s unintentionally disheartening to see how many decades of struggle went into something as basic as an amendment that, as the show repeatedly reminds audiences, in practice only ensured suffrage for white women. Keep marching, as the show insists, even if it’s in slow motion.
“Suffs” plays at West Herr Auditorium Theatre through June 14. More info and tickets here.
Katherine Varga is a Rochester-based writer and arts educator. On an ideal day, you’ll find her biking to a library or theater.
