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Both composer-playwrights built their musicals around themselves.
Both creators also place their emphasis, firmly, on work.
Suffer, yes, our founders did that.
But both musicals elevate sedulousness, an under-celebrated trait, to something next to saintliness.
Suffstakes place on a set of gray steps, in front of huge columns.
(Mimi Lien designed the set.)
Were outside some government building rather, were outside government itself.
Suffsis at war with itself because its about a movement that was itself divided.
I felt just so when I was young.
I wouldnt saySuffsis a warts and all portrait, but it does acknowledge certain costs.
One terrible cost was moral: Paul invited Ida B.
(Wells refused.)
This choice haunts the musical, which may explain why the whole production has a nightmarish tinge.
Some of this melancholy quality is simple truth-telling and a refusal to romanticize.
That crazy Medusa is as shrill as you get / She cant get a man so shes a suffragette!
The number needs enormous energy; it doesnt get it.
At the risk of sounding like Carrie Chapman Catt, incremental change might be the answer.
A couple more jokes?
A touch more light?
The musical is already piercing and deeply felt andgood.
Suffsis at the Public Theater through May 15.
(Tonights opening performance was canceled after several members of the company contracted COVID.)
