STAR-NEWS THEATER REVIEW, Indianpolis, IN
Location: Epilogue Players at Hedback Corner Theatre, 1849 N. Alabama St.
When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through March 17, all sold out,
and added performance 8 p.m. Thursday.
Tickets: $8 adults, $7 ages 62 and older and students 12 and
younger. Reservations recommended: 1-317-846-1581.
If you are the least bit interested in how women got to be corporate presidents and members of Congress, then head over to Epilogue Players and catch a performance of Saint Susan. This is local playwright Marsha L. Grant's genuinely historical and engrossing exploration of the women's suffrage movement in the United States from 1851 to 1920, when women finally got the right to vote.
It's mixed up with the Civil War, the fight against slavery and the temperance movement, which first energized women to rebel against the laws made by men to benefit men, who often came home drunk and beat up their families. Women were no better than chattel, the property of their husbands (who romanticized the notion that they were protecting women by putting them on a pedestal, and handling all their money).
Susan B. Anthony, an unmarried Quaker born in Rochester, N.Y., in 1820, became the unblinking advocate of women's rights after her 1851 meeting with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a housewife, philosopher and early feminist. While Stanton stayed home and wrote, Anthony toured the country, inspiring women with her fiery delivery of Stanton's words. The two made a formidable team.
Their ups and downs are incorporated in brilliant fashion by Grant, who has included 24 characters in this well-costumed historical drama. It moves in and out of periods and problems with ease, as various characters step forth to act, interact and comment.
From extensive research, Grant has woven together material from journals, letters, books and the transcripts of Anthony's 1873 trial in which she was convicted of being a woman -- who could not vote -- when she voted "as a citizen" for a congressman and a president in the election of 1872.
Grant directs a well-trained cast, which includes the formidable Ron Rose as escaped slave Frederick Douglass, who became a prominent abolitionist, and the excellent Nancy Johnson as Sojourner Truth, the freed slave who became an outspoken proponent of rights for blacks, women, and especially black women. Most notable, however, are Deborah Adams, who plays Anthony as a middle-aged fighter, and Agnes Mangus, who plays her in old age. Mangus is as feisty as her younger self, but Adams is the "spittin' image" of Anthony. Susan Townsend and Marjorie Johnson play the two Elizabeth Cady Stantons, much less mercurial characters. But they manage to establish nice relationships with their counterparts. A host of mature actors and actresses take part in this play. Every member of Epilogue Players, the company founded by and for theater people age 50 and older, must have turned out. They're all to be congratulated on a job well done.
The structure of the play is similar to 1776 without the music, as each character comes forward with his own contribution, and Grant weaves it into an inclusive and understandable narrative. What's striking is how long and hard these women fought, against great odds. A tiny band of the "weaker sex" eventually managed to change the country by securing the vote for women. Think what kind of country this would be if they had not succeeded.
Call Marion Garmel at 1-317-444-6078.