Review: Shaina Taub’s Suffs on Broadway Sacrifices the Personal for the Political

“The personal is political” is a second-wave feminist battle cry. With top notch performances, rousing musical numbers, and messaging the masses can get behind, Shaina Taub’s Suffs, now at the Music Box Theatre after a 2022 run at the Public Theater, gets the political part right,  but sacrifices the personal to do so.

The musical centers on suffragist Alice Paul (played by Taub, only the second woman in history to pen book, music, and lyrics, and star in a Broadway musical). Paul is hungry to finally secure the vote for women, which, by 1913, has been an active political issue for more than 60 years. She clashes with the suffrage establishment leader Carrie Chapman Catt (Jenn Colella), who recommends a gradual winning of support. For Paul, it’s too slow: “Our motto,” she says, “might as well be ‘state by state, slow and steady, not until we’re dead.'”

Deciding that the movement needs more action, Paul gathers a girl squad of Inez Milholland (Hannah Cruz), Ruza Wenclawska (Kim Blanck), Lucy Burns (Ally Bonino), and Doris Stevens (Nadia Dandashi), who organize a march. This group employs tactics of nonviolent protest that are increasingly confrontational to President Woodrow Wilson (a hilarious Grace McLean). These are actions that Catt fears will undermine, or even destroy, the progress she has made.

Suffs starts strong, dropping us right in the conflict between the old guard and younger suffragists with the patriotic “Let Mother Vote” and the driving “Find a Way” in rapid succession. But Taub introduces so many characters that, despite everyone’s best intentions, we don’t fully connect with anyone. When it comes to why these women want the vote, they sing as a monolith about their mothers, their sisters, and their children, with no individual concerns to differentiate them, despite at least one of them being a radical socialist who obviously had bigger goals. The friendships and rivalries of the characters aren’t fully drawn enough to distinguish them either. While there’s a nod to relationship growth in the conflict between Catt and Paul, it’s disappointing that in a musical full of women, there are no fully textured or complex relationships between any of them.

The cast is excellent. When the book or songs drag, the all-female company doesn’t, delivering high intensity that is invigorating. I was thrilled that my favorite historical scorned ex-wife of a robber baron, Alva Belmont, makes an appearance as played by the hilarious Emily Skinner. Nikki M. James as Ida B. Wells gives a blistering performance in “Wait My Turn,” a song that details her anger at the hypocrisy of white feminists and their lack of concern for Black issues. After this high point, James unfortunately has nowhere else to go emotionally or plot-wise. It’s historically accurate, as Wells was ostracized from white suffrage spaces, but it doesn’t give a full picture of Wells’s grievances or her activism.

I cringed at a joke about Wells being tired because she has four kids — this is a woman who fled her home state after angry white people burned her house down, and she kept writing. That’s what’s making her tired. It’s a throwaway line, but in Wells’s only scene of direct interaction with the white suffs, it matters. Though the racism of the suffrage movement is talked about by the Black characters, who also include Anastacia McCleskey as Mary Church Terrell, it is not dramatized, aside from a handful of hand-wringing lines near the start of the show, a missed opportunity for deeper conflict and layered characters.

Leigh Silverman’s direction keeps the disparate people and storylines from getting muddled together, which seems likely in less capable hands. Riccardo Hernández’s scenic design tracks the suffragists from street corner to crummy office to fancy digs. It’s a challenge to convey forward marching onstage, but the choreography by Mayte Natalio works better than expected.

Winning the vote feels inevitable throughout, so without deep emotional stakes to drive the story, Suffs can feel plodding as it hits the historical beats. But this show is ultimately necessary. Aside from Wells, these women go largely unmentioned in America’s schools. It makes sense that Taub is cramming in as much as she can, even when the show goes outside its scope with a tacked-on jump to the 1970s. Suffs aims to encourage women to keep going, which is an admirable goal, and it makes for a fun night of theater. But to paraphrase Susan B. Anthony, without diving deeper, it’s not going to radicalize anyone.