By MARY RICHE

NEW YORK, N.Y. – We RicheBurgers were here for five days last week, mainly so we could see three shows on Broadway, a Christmas present to me from Chuck.

I’m discussing the shows here in my column. You can read Chuck’s column about the rest of our New York CIty experiences by clicking right here.

Now, on with the shows, starting with some background.

I credit my lifetime interest in film and the whole entertainment world to those years when my parents would take my younger sister Bette and me to see a movie on New Year’s Eve, which was also their wedding date.

Seeing my first film, “Around the World in 80 Days,” when I was 9 years old made quite an impression.  So, it was natural for me at the age of 10 to become the producer, director, and singer/star of shows in our living room for my parents and their friends.

In our small farmhouse between the towns of Stanley and Aurora in northeast Iowa, the living room was our stage. With my sister as my assistant, we used two sheets and safety pins for the curtain we strung between two floor lamps to separate the few feet between our stage and audience.

The final number, which brought down the house, featured sister Bette twirling the Riche globe with one hand while shining a flashlight on that spinning orb, while I played piano and sang “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”

I’ve been hooked on “show business” ever since.

Mary Riche, outside the Music Box Theatre, where the musical “Suffs” was staged.

The three shows we saw last week were the musical “Suffs,” and two dramas, “Left on Tenth” and “The Roommate.”

In this column, I’m going to fully review only “Suffs,” as I’m still forming my thoughts on the two dramas.  But let me briefly describe them.

–“Left on Tenth,” adapted by Delia Ephron from her April, 2022, memoir and directed by award-winning Susan Stroman, began performances at the James Earl Jones Theatre on Broadway on September 26 this fall, with an official opening set October 23.  We saw it Oct. 2.  Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher were outstanding in their portrayals of “Delia” and “Peter,” as they found love in their 70s after a 50+ year friendship.  They acted like teenagers during their courtship, married four months later, and soon had to overcome Delia’s newly-diagnosed cancer with a new form of bone marrow transplant that saved her life.  Chuck and I clung to each other as we left the theater, and at the stage door, he told Margulies about the stem cells transplant that saved his life in 2010.  She was perfect in her genuine, warm response, saying, “And you’re still here!”

Meeting Julianna Margulies after “Left on Tenth.”

And actor Peter Gallagher.

–“The Roommate” was written by University of Iowa Playwright Workshop graduate Jen Silverman, and stars Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone in this 2-person play.  It opened at the Booth Theatre on September 12 this fall for a limited run that ends this Dec. 15.  Mia, at 79 years old, is in the starring role about two women who become roommates for different reasons.  The laughs turn to gasps as the storyline shifts, with an ending that Chuck and I have now discussed more than once.  The setting is Iowa City, and the references to Iowa include some zingers.

Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone at the curtain call for “The Roommate.”

Mia Farrow waves to the crowd as she leaves the Booth Theatre.

Now, back to “Suffs,” a word that is actually a hip short-form of “suffragists.”  I’m a bit red-faced that I knew little about this musical, given its theme and message, until the recent Tony awards.

And that’s when Shaina Taub became the first solo woman to win both the “Best Book of a Musical” and the “Best Original Score” in the Tonys.

That night, “Suffs” co-producer Hillary Clinton, my choice for President in the 2016 election, introduced the company’s performance  of “Keep Marching, ” the finale number that had this feminist crying when I saw it on TV.    And it was the first show I booked for our trip to New York City, and I was sobbing when I saw it in person four days ago at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway.

Taub is a talented playwright, composer, lyricist, singer and actor, just like another of my all-time favorite musical geniuses, Lin-Manuel Miranda.  His creation of “Hamilton” still takes my breath away even after seeing it multiple times.  (Don’t miss it when it comes to Des Moines next summer.)

Both Miranda and Taub wrote scripts, composed music, wrote lyrics, and then starred in lead performance roles in their shows.

Meeting the very talented Shaina Taub after “Suffs.”

In “Suffs,” Taub stars as suffragist Alice Paul, the central character in this musical.  Paul was raised a Quaker, as a child attended suffragist meetings with her mother, and was highly educated for those times.  She earned a Ph.d. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania,and a law degree from the Washington College of Law at American University in 1922.

Paul set her fearless sights on amending the U.S. Constitution to include the right to vote for women.  This play beautifully weaves the highlights of Paul’s years in this struggle, complete with its complicated history, which Taub has turned into an understandable story line.

Nikki James plays early Black journalist Ida B. Wells, a central figure in the women’s suffrage movement even though Black women would not benefit from the 19^th Amendment.  She was intensely fierce yet composed when she sang “Wait my Turn” about the plan to have Black women march “behind” the White women in 1913 in Washington D.C., the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.  James as Wells appears throughout this play, reflecting her influential role as a Chicago columnist with a national audience, one who opposed World War I.

“Suffs” opened on Broadway in March of this year, however it was intended to premier two years ago but was delayed by COVID.  Leigh Silverman directed the first iteration of “Suffs,” and she was nominated for a 2024 Tony for directing the current show.

Taub kept working on the storyline during those two COVID years, and she made a major change to include dialogue, enough spoken word to help audiences understand the depth in various relationships, and explaining the factions within the women’s leadership.

That dialogue also spotlighted the passing of time, the number of years and the toll that passing of time took on these young rebels in their years of struggle.

The case of “Suffs” at the curtain call in the Music Box Theatre.

Taub also changed the opening number from an “in your face” kind of anthem that she feared would preach at the audience or knock them off their feet before they knew what was at stake.

Her new opening number, “Give Mother the Vote,” is a cute little parody tune with catchy lyrics showcasing the talent of actress Jenn Colella in her portrayal of Carrie Chapman Catt.

This number effectively established the contrast between these early crusaders wearing hats and gloves with corseted dresses as they politely asked the men in Congress and the White House to please “Give Mother the Vote.”  Alice Paul enters the stage and this arena with a brusqueness that was off-putting and more than a little irritating to Catt.

Paul describes her campaign strategy which would not require dresses or gloves.  She and her helpers sing the raucous foot-stomping “G.A.B,” that had all of us laughing so much we were crying tears of laughter.  (G.A.B. stands for “Great American Bitch,” and the concession stand was selling jackets with that label.)

During the 1913 march, another kind of glove – boxing gloves — might have been helpful when men against women’s rights joined the parade, started a fight with the women marchers, and only backed off when police arrived.  However, the bruised and wounded suffragists kept marching.

Over the years, Paul was arrested, sent to a work prison, beaten, and force-fed with a nasal tube after her hunger strike.  Those scenes were portrayed with no props, yet I had no doubt about the brutality she endured and survived.

Throughout that next decade, Paul and Catt kept tangling about strategies, and in 1919, Congress finally approved an amendment to the U.S. Constitution and sent out the amendment for ratification by the states.

The play’s emotional intensity ratchets up as the amendment nears passage.  We hear the song  “A Letter from Harry’s Mother” urging him, a legislator in Tennessee, to vote yes.  And he voted yes, so Tennessee became the final state to ratify the amendment.  The suffragists had won their battle. Women had earned the right to vote! Those moving lyrics were:

Now your own little girl is nearly three
What do you want her future to be?
Vote aye for her, my son
Let your mama know she raised a good one.

Another touching scene toward the end of the play occurs when Paul realizes she has become the “old guard” as she accused Catt of being when they first met.  Paul remained singly focused on women’s rights, this time for the Equal Rights Amendment that she authored.  Catt heads to Europe with her longtime friend and lover, a woman.

The historic looking “Suffs” playbill distributed at the Music Box Theatre.

I truly enjoyed all the musical numbers.  And that finale of “Keep Marching” is seared into my memory because of these lyrics:

The gains will feel small and the losses too large
Keep marching, keep marching
You’ll rarely agree with whoever’s in charge
Keep marching, keep marching
‘Cause your ancestors are all the proof you need
That progress is possible, not guaranteed
It will only be made if we keep marching, keep marching on!

The cast was all female, even though there were male characters in this play.  The major actors were all perfectly cast in their roles. The set was minimal, the scene changes were rapid, and there was no doubt about where the action was happening.  They even burned President Wilson in effigy, using real fire.

We had fabulous seats, and I loved this musical with its important message about a 75-years-long fight to legally gain the right to vote for my gender.  That’s 75 years from the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848.  Not 75 years from the founding of this country.

There was a lot of history in this musical, much of it not taught in the history books I studied.  My gender waited a very long time for the right to vote, to cast a ballot for candidates in elections.  And women and men of color waited even longer.

Toward the end of the play, one main character asks the other why she wants to write a book about their lives.

“So they can learn how hard it was, and never try again?”

“No.  So they can learn how hard it was, and know it can be done.”

Thank you, 36-year-old genius Shaina Taub, for bringing attention and light to these women I now think of as friends and compatriots.  Thank you for creating a show for the ages, and I look forward to whatever is next on your creative journey.

Yes, indeed, Mary Riche is one.

The writer can be reached by email at maryriche@gmail.com or you can comment publicly on the story by using the handy form below here.