A TIME WARP TO THE 1970s WOMEN’S
MOVEMENT, REFRACTED THROUGH 2025 EYES
STILL SQUINTING TOWARDS EQUALITY

“Why does it feel somehow like it’s all slipping away? And how do we get it back?”

Susannah Flood

That’s one of the questions posed about the condition of gender equality in 2025 America at the start of Liberation, Bess Wohl’s vivid new memory play that brings the 1970s women’s movement roaring back to life at the James Earl Jones Theatre. It’s part lament, part rallying cry — a look at where gender equality began to bloom, and where it still wilts.

Adina Verson, with Susannah Flood and Kristolyn Lloyd

Betsy Aidem, Kristolyn Lloyd, Adina Verson,
Audrey Corsa, Irene Sofia Lucio and Susannah Flood

Our guide through the decades is Lizzie, played with nimble intelligence and sly charm by Susannah Flood, a reluctant leader organizing and participating in a woman’s support group in 1970s Ohio. She begins the night as herself — an actress who will join the play as own mother, while occasionally addressing the audience as herself for asides and exposition. Yes, this sounds complicated on paper, but don’t worry, Flood breaks it down for you in a funny monologue with jokes about cell phones, and the logistics of a night out to Broadway. With a wink to the audience, she dismantles any confusion before it starts, setting a tone of brisk self-awareness.

Kristolyn Lloyd, Irene Sofia Lucio, Betsy Aidem and Audrey Corsa

Adina Verson, Susannah Flood, Betsy Aidem,
Audrey Corsa, Kristolyn Lloyd and Irene Sofia Lucio

She introduces the cast, and gets us started with the first official meeting of our troupe, women who hail from all walks of life, coming together as broad archetypes of American women to be found in the 1970s. Once Flood ushers us into that Ohio rec-center basement, Liberation becomes a sharply drawn collage of consciousness-raising sessions that defined 1970s feminism, and the play finds its rhythm: a bruised, funny portrait of women rediscovering themselves one meeting at a time.

Irene Sofia Lucio and Kristolyn Lloyd

Kayla Davion and Kristolyn Lloyd

Wohl’s characters are a cross-section of female America. They may enter as archetypes, but they emerge as women in motion — messy, funny, flawed, and searching. Betsy Aidem’s Margie is a housewife fraying at the seams as her retired husband clogs her oxygen. Audrey Corsa’s Dora is a young corporate climber outpacing a sea of male mediocrity. Kayla Davion’s Joanne, a radical from New York in town to take care of her aged mother. Irene Sofia Lucio’s Isidora, an immigrant from Italy, dreams of becoming a filmmaker, still the outsider in every way. Adina Verson’s Susan, in cropped hair, a leather jacket, and a “Lavender Menace” tee, drops Marxist zingers like grenades. And Kristen Lloyd’s Celeste—forever popping in to retrieve her sons’ gym bags —becomes our accidental witness, the eavesdropper-turned-ally. We see our comrades grow and learn together, then catch up with them a few years later. We even see them decades after the meetings when they reflect on the time they spent together.

Kayla Davion and Charlie Thurston

Charlie Thurston

The lone Y chromosome holder, Charlie Thurston’s Bill (Lizzie’s father), drifts briefly through as a well-meaning progressive (is it being a “performative male” to play a progressive man in a play about woman’s liberation? Who cares? This play isn’t about men. Thurston is a mensch either way, plus he’s got a good three-point shot).

Adina Verson and Kristolyn Lloyd

Kristolyn Lloyd

As she did with her all-female ensemble in Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, Whitney White stages the play with both deft timing and mischief. She lets the overlapping dialogue breathe, finds humor in frustration, and allows intense emotional moments to arrive without announcement. Cha See’s lighting handles all of the flash-forwards, transitions, and other visual, flipping from sepia Polaroid fresnel warmth to the cold, sterile clarity of fluorescent truth. Queen Jean’s costumes chart the social strata of the 1970s — tomboy to housewife, yuppie to radical — with polyester for the homemaker, denim for the rebel, and the occasional disco shimmer of hope. David Zinn’s set — a perfectly scuffed gymnasium of creaky wooden bleachers, walls adorned with gymnastics pads, a basketball hoop on a folding bracket, and a plank wooden floor — becomes its own character, a womb of defiance and self-discovery as the women meet, bond, and bare it all.

Susannah Flood and Betsy Aidem

Susannah Flood and Irene Sofia Lucio

I don’t use the phrase “bare it all” lightly. A mid-show body-acceptance exercise — performed nude — is not a stunt but an invocation (your phone will be wrapped in a locked pouch). One of Liberation’s most resonant scenes, it’s funny, moving, and shockingly tender, a moment when vulnerability becomes rebellion. The scene earns applause not for nudity, but for naked honesty — its candor about aging, race, beauty privilege, and the infamous “orgasm gap” lands like a collective exhale.

Betsy Aidem, Kristolyn Lloyd, Irene Sofia Lucio,
Adina Verson, Audrey Corsa and Susannah Flood

 Irene Sofia Lucio

But even if none of these actresses appeared nude on stage, their performances wouldn’t be any less vulnerable. Liberation may be an ensemble piece, but that doesn’t stop each of our progress-seeking protagonists from delivering engaging performances of range and depth. Standouts include Ms. Aidem as the oldest member who commands respect with earthy humor and authority while delivering some of the biggest laughs of the night; Davion and Lloyd ignite the play’s fiercest exchanges, sparring over the progressive and conservative view between two women of color, as well as holding Lizzie and company accountable for white feminist blind spots that they and suffragettes past had when it came to the intersection of race and gender in the United States. The other actresses provide nuance and spark in every exchange, and Flood—ever our lodestar—guides the story and jogs the narrative with curiosity, grace, and the quiet ache of inheritance.

Irene Sofia Lucio, Kristolyn Lloyd, Adina Verson and Betsy Aidem

The Company

Keeping the revolution bottled inside one gymnasium has limits. Sometimes Liberation slips into a series of speeches about offstage events instead of dramatizing them; some might leave the theater wishing to have seen those events. But White’s direction keeps the energy supple, and the cast’s camaraderie fills the gaps with lived-in authenticity. When we jump decades ahead and see what became of these women, the echoes are poignant and unresolved—just as history itself remains.

Audrey Corsa

Betsy Aidem and Adina Verson

Messy? Absolutely. Talky? Occasionally. Alive? Completely. Liberation doesn’t tidy up the movement — it celebrates its frayed edges, its contradictions, its refusal to behave. Wohl’s play, anchored by the cast’s very real camaraderie, reminds us that liberation isn’t a state of being; it’s an ongoing argument, and one worth having again and again. Honest and raw, with unapologetic self awareness, it endearingly brings to life a story of sisterhood in the second wave feminist movement (with a healthy dash of squabbling).

If you can bear the exposition (pun intended), Liberation bares its soul, too.

Audrey Corsa, Kristolyn Lloyd, Irene Sofia Lucio and Adina Verson

Susannah Flood

photos by Little Fang

Liberation
James Earl Jones Theatre, 138 West 48th Street
2 hours and 30 minutes, including intermission
limited engagement ends on January 11, 2026
for tickets, visit Liberation