Review: SUFFS at Hollywood Pantages

Right now - and always - the American musical needs SUFFS. Badly.

Intending no disrespect to literature, IPs and the scores of movies ripe for the adapting, but we need stories not plucked from cinema. We need intelligent tales about – and starring – women. Damn do we ever need stories in which characters speak truth to power. We desperately must have literate new voices like that of Shaina Taub, the multi-hyphenate writer, composer, lyricist and sometimes actor whose musical chronicle of the fight to ratify the 19th amendment had the opening night crowd Pantages Theatre willing to pick up a torch and burn something down. On behalf of a century old fight!

Now on its national tour after completing an award-winning, 300-performance Broadway run in January, SUFFS brings a thorny part of our history thrillingly to life. A multi-cultural cast of 18 women directed by Leigh Silverman delivers an evening of heart, longing, regret and rage. If you don’t already know them, you’ll likely want to look up the names of Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt, Ida B. Wells and Ruza Wenclawska…after you’re done applauding until your palms are raw, that is.

What feels like it should properly be a tale of women’s unity for a common goal (we’re talking about the right for women to vote, after all) is also a multi-layered study in political maneuvering. Different generations and factions of suffragists went about things in very different ways. For Carrie Chapman Catt (played by Marya Grandy), leader of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWA), victory will only come after a series of small, deliberate steps. “We’ll nurse the USA/until corruption, greed, and vice are sweetly swept away,” she sings in SUFF’S un-ironic opening song  “Let Mother Vote.” “We’ll deploy domestic skills to cure domestic ills. So Mr. won’t you please let Mother Vote?”

That approach my fly at high tea, but activist Alice Paul (Maya Keleher), who is 25 years Catt’s junior, doesn’t possess Catt’s patience, and she’s not saying please. Frustrated with NAWSA’s slow progress, Paul enlists a small army to organize a march on Washington on the day of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Her team includes college friend Lucy Burns (Gwynne Wood), socialite Inez Milholland (Monica Tulia Ramirez), Polish labor organizer Ruza Wenclawska (Joyce Meimei Zheng) and college student Doris Stevens (Livvy Marcus). These women have vastly different personalities and amounts of fortitude, but under Paul’s leadership, they ignite the Woman Suffrage Procession, America’s first large organized march.

Not that anything comes easy. While trying to stay on Catt and NAWSA’s good side, Paul manages to piss off journalist and activist Ida B. Wells (Danyel Fulton) who wants the suffrage fight to encompass the rights of Black people, and who will not march with a specially created colored woman delegation. Wells has her own wishes with Mary Church Terrell (Trisha Jeffrey), another influential  Black activist whose “dignified agitation” is closer in line to what NAWSA is doing. The march ramps up awareness, and the accompanying hostility faced by Paul’s army has the foursome celebrating their arrivals as a “Great American Bitch,” a kick of a song led by Marcus’s initially aghast Doris Stevens. The newly- formed Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CUWS) now looks to meet with President Wilson, and we’re barely through the first act.

The deeper Taub takes us into this tale, the more dangerous the fight for the vote proves to be. Alliances are broken, lives are lost, and betrayals happen. Although he gives the suffragist leaders an audience and vague promises, an oily and hugely patronizing Wilson (Jenny Ashman) is more concerned with America’s involvement in the Great War. Unwilling to give up their fight, the CUWS increases its acts of resistance to include sit-ins, demonstrations, arrests and hunger strikes. The battle exacts a heavy toll on everybody.

The occasional bits of humor aside, there is nothing light or campy about this tale. Garbed with meticulous detail (by Costume Designer Paul Tazewell) from their hats down to their sashes, Taub’s suffs are warriors who take their battle from offices to the streets of Washington to prison cells. Taub’s terrific, mostly sung-through score is heavy on rousing ensemble numbers while also providing quieter, more personal ballads for Paul, Wells, and Phoebe Burn (Laura Stracko) the mother of a key member of the Tennessee General Assembly. And, as previously noted, it will take a heart of flint not to get caught up in those stirring group numbers with Silverman and choreographer Mayte Natalio guiding a stage full of women to “Finish the Fight” or ask “How Long.”

It's no accident that recent Broadway musicals with a historical and political current have found receptive audiences, particularly those (here’s looking at you, HAMILTON, SIX and the no-male 1776 revival) that have spanned the two Trump presidencies. In addition to plenty of young men and women for whom this history lesson is essential, one suspects the audiences of SUFFS were out on the streets during the 2025 No Kings rallies. Never have the curtain-closing words “keep marching on” felt more urgent.

Taking a break from playing Emma Goldman in the current revival of RAGTIME, Taub herself gave an inspiring post-curtain speech at the opening night of SUFFS. Here’s wishing this important new voice both a speedy return to the wars and the inspiration to write a new musical.

SUFFS plays through Dec. 7 at 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.