Tuneful songs and terrific performances do their utmost to overcome a by-the-numbers book and workshop-level production values in the Sierra Madre Playhouse World Premiere of The Right Is Ours, aka The Suffragette Musical.

The women’s rights advocates in question are Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), whose decades-long commitment to equality led eventually to the 1920 enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment, though unfortunately not during either woman’s lifetime.

We start off at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 where the first wave of the Woman’s Rights Movement was born, then fast-forward a few years to the day Susan (Anna Mintzer) introduced herself to Elizabeth (Emily Abeles), the main force behind the convention, and a lifelong friendship and collaboration was born.

On the surface, at least, the two women had little in common. Elizabeth, then 35, was already a wife and mother, while Susan, five years her junior, was married only to her passion for women’s equality (and a Quaker preference for head-to-toe black).

Book writer Lloyd J. Schwartz and composer-lyricist Adryan Russ then go on to chart the highs and lows of both the movement and the two women’s best-friendship, including Elizabeth’s brief advocacy of “bloomers” (pantaloons worn under a knee-length dress), a fashion fail celebrated in song by fellow feminists Ida (Paige Berkovitz), Christabel (Carlin Castellano), and Emmeline (Jacquelin Lorraine Schofield), who serve as a three-part-harmonizing Greek Chorus throughout the show.

Not that Elizabeth and Susan’s friendship was without intermittent conflicts. (The former’s fear of public speaking meant convincing her more outgoing friend to take the podium at an early equal rights convention, and though a reluctant Susan allowed herself to be persuaded to speak, she did so without honoring Elizabeth’s request to include remarks about “the intrinsic values of motherhood.”)

Still, Elizabeth and Susan persevered together, despite passionate opposition from members of the opposite sex, and despite the disappointment of seeing African Americans, whose rights they’d fought side-by-side for, not support them once equality under the law for men of color was codified by the Fourteenth Amendment.

At the very least, Schwartz and Russ deserve snaps for their choice of subject matter (I’m guessing many in the audience will be learning about Elizabeth and Susan for the first time), and Russ’s song-writing gifts (a flair for catchy melodies and smart lyrics) will have audiences humming along inside their heads.

Writer-director Shwartz’s book, on the other hand, seems run of the mill by comparison, too often stilted by formal speech patterns (characters routinely avoid using conversational contractions, for example), where a more contemporary sensibility might make Elizabeth and Susan feel less like historical figures and more like real women.

At the very least there can be no quibbling about the stellar work being done by The Right Is Ours’s two luminous leading ladies.

Abeles is a perky charmer as Elizabeth, Mintzer (so memorable in Musical Theatre West’s Bright Star) proves that a woman can be radiant even when dressed as if for a funeral, and the two leads have terrific chemistry together and gorgeous pipes to boot.

Berkovitz, Castellano, and Schofield add delightful support throughout the show’s ninety-minute running time, sing quite splendidly under Gregory Nabours and Thomas Griep’s music direction, and kick up their heels like pros to choreographer Kay Cole’s occasional footwork, with Schofield earning quite possibly the evening’s loudest ovation for Emmeline’s salute to women of color, a stunningly performed “Ain’t I A Woman?”

Still, despite whatever nits I have to pick with Shwartz’s book, they pale in comparison to the pedestrian production design this World Premiere musical has been given by a theater once known for giving regional proscenium stages a run for their money.

Gregory Craft’s “set design” consists of a few pieces of furniture occasionally carried onto an otherwise entirely bare stage, and Rick Simone’s projection design is nothing more than a slide show occasionally projected onto an otherwise mostly blank upstage movie screen.

Craft’s lighting is hit and miss at best, prerecorded tracks are a tinny substitute for live accompaniment, and Vicki Conrad’s handful of costumes give little indication of precisely what decade we’re in, though this isn’t the only reason it’s hard to know how much time elapses between the women’s first encounter and the overnight aging late in the show that has Susan’s hair suddenly turned grey and Elizabeth sporting a Mrs. Santa Claus wig.

Gary B. Lamb is production consultant. Kathie Barnes is associate producer. Kat Sherrell is orchestrator. Dylan Pass is hair and makeup designer. Jeanne Marie Valleroy is projection programmer and Berrie Tseng and Valleroy are props masters.

Dale Alan Cooke is stage manager and Grace Berry is assistant stage manager.

Castellano plays Susan B. Anthony and understudy Katherine Chatman goes on as Christabel September 22, 23, and 14.

With Roe-v-Wade now sadly a thing of the past, the time could not be riper for a musical celebrating two women who spent their lives paving a path for the second-and-third-wave feminists to come, and at least as far as its songs and performances are concerned, The Right Is Ours works. If only I could say the same for the rest.

Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre.
www.sierramadreplayhouse.org

–Steven Stanley
September 15, 2023
Photos: Berrie Tsemg

Tags: Adryan Russ, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lloyd J. Schwartz, Los Angeles Theater Review, Sierra Madre Playhouse, Susan B. Anthony