Liberation – 24 October 2025

Within itself, Liberation is a play that celebrates the excitement that comes from gathering together to change the world. In this moment, as our current world is backsliding and civil rights are once again up for debate, Liberation becomes a painful reminder of just how many people have dedicated the entirety of their lives to the quest for equality. Their great strides forward are being erased, and, in some ways, Liberation explores the sadness as well as the joy in the fact that the women’s liberation movement still exists today, fifty five years after this production is set. Since its off Broadway run, Liberation has become increasingly relevant. Though the bulk of the show remains unchanged since I reviewed it off Broadway (click here to read that review), the changing times have forced me to examine it in a new light. In today’s world, this play is significantly more radical, and the act of performing it has become an increasingly radical act. I applaud those who choose to be part of a production that shouldn’t still be bold and revolutionary, yet is. Liberation should be a work of historical fiction, yet it is now an instruction manual for present times. Liberation posits that we have to get together and fight for everyone’s right to choose how they want to live their life, even when those choices are different from the ones we might personally make for ourselves.

There are many powerful moments in this production. One of my favorites is the nude scene. There’s a brief part where the protagonist, Lizzie (Susannah Flood) steps out of the nude scene and tells the audience that it’s weird to break the fourth wall while naked. By this moment, all of the women on stage are naked, yet the audience has forgotten. The level of emotional vulnerability in this scene is so high that the physical reality of six nude Broadway actresses takes a backseat. Lizzie’s moment of narration reminds the audience that, in a way, the entire play is performed naked. The raw reality of getting together in a basement to raise consciousness and take individual, then collective actions toward equality involves a baring of the soul that is more real than taking off one’s clothes to talk about how everyone has a part of their body that they hate and a part that they love. This moment is, in context, the least radical act of the show, necessary only to contrast the bravery shown in other moments.

Both times that I saw Liberation, I was seated near other critics, as well as audience members from the general population. I have observed that this show means a lot to women; most of the women seated near me both on and off Broadway cried at some point during the show. Unfortunately the men, critics included, seemed rather unmoved. At intermission, the conversations I overheard between women were laudatory praises of the performance. The conversations I heard between men were largely about other things, after brief expressions of boredom. I bring this up as a transgender man with a foot in both worlds. It hurts me to think that those who need this play and its message the most might not be getting it. It is not the fault of the production. This apathetic resistance is the product of our time.

There are those who will find these characters closer to caricatures and will attend a performance of Liberation without truly seeing it. As Lizzie says in the opening monologue, there are those who just want to know how much more time women’s liberation will take. When will this be over? When can we talk about something else? When can we get our phones out of the Yondr pouches, a step the production has taken to protect these women who bravely expose themselves from having unwanted nude photographs of them appear online? Why do we live in a time where treating performers as human beings who deserve this respect has to be questioned to the degree that we can’t trust our audiences and must lock away their phones in the first place? After all, these are people who are coming to see a play about the historical roots of our ongoing fight for liberation.

At the end of the performance, Lizzie leaves the world in our hands, asking the audience to pick up the torch and continue the fight ourselves, as her exploration of the past turns out not to change the contradictions of the present. With the women of the show gone, who will do the work of changing the world? I wish I could say that at the end of the show it felt like the entire audience was moved to continue the fight. But it still felt like only the women were. Even with the character of Bill (Charlie Thurston), Liberation fails to make the issue of equality for women seem like everybody’s fight—a fight that all genders can and should participate in. I wish the show were less relevant, but because of how necessary this production is, I simply cannot pick it apart like a stagnant work of art. We must find these women in ourselves and in each other, and we must carry their spirits with us until their ideas are once again the norm. We must raise consciousness now, in 2025. It did work for a time. We can do it again. We must.

I attended this performance on a press pass from The Press Room.