‘Liberation’ Review: Sisterhood, With Notes
With all the hype Liberation had with its off-Broadway run, I went in with high expectations. I expected a smart period piece about second-wave feminism. However, I did not expect a play that feels like someone cracked open a family photo album, discovered a half-finished revolution inside it, and then asked the audience to sit with the mess rather than polish it into a neat lesson. That is the hook here, and it is also the dare. This is a memory play that refuses to be soft focus. It is funny, yes, often bitingly so, but it is also relentless about the cost of becoming “a woman with opinions” in a world that prefers women as supporting characters in other people’s stories. The official framing calls it “necessary, messy, and bitingly funny,” and that is not marketing fluff; it is the operating system of the night.
[Warning: Spoilers from Liberation are below!]
Why Liberation speaks volumes
At the center is an elegantly theatrical idea: the past is not a flashback, it is a room you can walk into, rearrange, and accidentally lie to yourself inside. Lizzie’s daughter steps into her mother’s memory and tries to understand what happened, not just to the movement, but to the women who carried it. That framing is why the play lands. It is not simply “Look at what feminists fought for.” It is “Look at what they wanted, what they compromised, what they did not know how to name yet, and what they handed down anyway.” It is also why the show feels urgent in 2026, even though its central timeline lives in 1970s Ohio.
The other reason it works is that the production does not let the audience sit above the material. The play keeps implicating the viewer, especially anyone who has ever said, “We already did that,” about rights, equality, and progress. The push and pull between idealism and reality is not treated as a historical artifact. It is treated as a pattern. This Broadway engagement played at the James Earl Jones Theatre, with previews beginning October 8, 2025, and it ran through February 1, 2026. That timeline matters because it means this is not a museum piece that arrived and left quietly. It was programmed and received as a current moment play.
Six women, a basement gym, and the questions that do not die
It is 1970s Ohio. Lizzie gathers a group of women for what becomes a consciousness-raising-style meeting space, a place to talk honestly about their lives, their bodies, their work, their marriages, their fears, their ambitions, and the word “freedom,” which looks different depending on who is saying it. Fifty years later, Lizzie’s daughter steps into that memory and tries to understand where things shifted, where solidarity held, where it fractured, and what the movement gave her mother and took from her mother.
The play’s great move is that it does not romanticize the group as instantly enlightened. It shows the awkward beginnings, the grand statements, the petty disagreements, the gaps in empathy, and the different kinds of risk each woman is able or willing to take. It also shows how quickly “politics” becomes personal when the world is legislating your options.
This is an ensemble piece in the most satisfying way, because every character brings a different version of liberation to the table, and the friction between those versions becomes the drama.
Susannah Flood as Lizzie doesn’t just anchor the play; she calibrates it. Her performance carries the tricky double exposure of two timelines, and she makes that split feel lived-in rather than theatrical. Even in quieter moments, you can see Lizzie thinking in real time, trying to hold onto a version of the past that keeps shifting the moment she touches it. Flood’s strength is how she lets doubt sit right next to conviction. She can be the room’s momentum and its hesitation in the same breath, which makes Lizzie feel like both the author of this movement and someone still unsure what it actually cost her.
Betsy Aidem as Margie is a masterclass in making “the traditional one” feel dangerous, funny, and heartbreakingly human all at once. Aidem knows exactly how to land a laugh without shrinking the character into a punchline. Her Margie has impeccable timing, but the real power is what comes after the laugh: a flash of rage, a moment of fear, a sudden vulnerability that makes it clear she isn’t resisting change because she’s shallow.
Adina Verson as Susan brings a sharp, focused intensity that changes the temperature of every scene she’s in. Verson plays Susan like someone who has spent years sanding down her own edges for other people’s comfort and has finally decided she’s done doing that labor for free. There’s a precision to her delivery that makes even simple statements feel like they’ve been rehearsed in her head a thousand times, and the payoff is watching her choose honesty anyway.
Kristolyn Lloyd as Celeste and Kayla Davion as Joanne are the production’s truth-tellers, and not in a neat, “here comes the lesson” way. Lloyd brings a grounded clarity that reads like lived experience, a presence that makes the room’s blind spots impossible to ignore. She has a way of listening that feels active, like she’s clocking every assumption and filing it away. Davion, meanwhile, brings a heat that keeps the group from slipping into comfort or self-congratulation. Her Joanne doesn’t soften her point to make it easier to swallow, and that refusal becomes its own kind of power.
Irene Sofia Lucio as Isidora and Audrey Corsa as Dora add the kind of texture that makes the group feel real rather than curated. Lucio brings an expressive openness that can flip from warmth to steel in a heartbeat, giving Isidora an unpredictability that feels like someone deciding, in real time, how much of themselves they’re willing to reveal. Corsa’s Dora brings a different kind of electricity: quick, reactive, and emotionally alert, like she’s always clocking the social dynamics and deciding whether to play along or blow the whole thing up.
And because the whole thing is driven by group energy, the ensemble impact is not just a nice extra. It is the reason the play has earned so much “best ensemble” praise in its life.
Why Liberation still feels applicable now
This play does not flatter the audience. That is why it feels current.
First, it understands that progress is not a straight line. It is a loop with recurring arguments, updated vocabulary, and the same core question: who gets to be safe, autonomous, and believed. The show is rooted in second-wave feminism, but it is also in conversation with today’s fights over bodily autonomy, workplace power, and the cultural backlash that follows every step forward.
Second, the play is honest about how movements fail people, not just how they inspire them. It refuses the comforting fiction that “women supporting women” is always simple or pure. Instead, it shows the interpersonal politics that shape whose pain is taken seriously, whose anger is labeled “too much,” and whose liberation is treated as optional.
Third, it nails the generational tension that a lot of us are living through right now. The daughter’s search is not just curiosity. It is the modern feeling of inheriting a world that claims battles are over, while your lived reality says otherwise. That is a deeply contemporary ache, and the play treats it with both humor and seriousness.
The one caution: it is not a gentle night at the theater
If you want your political theatre to wrap itself up with a tidy moral and a reassuring bow, Liberation is not interested. It asks you to sit with contradiction.
You should also know that the content is adult. This production includes adult language and nudity, and it uses theatrical haze or smoke, including herbal cigarettes. That is not a warning meant to scare anyone off; it is simply fair information to keep the audience from being caught off guard.
Final verdict on Liberation
Liberation is the kind of play that makes you laugh, then makes you feel slightly guilty for laughing, then makes you realize that the guilt is part of the point. It is a sharp, human, unapologetically complicated look at women trying to name their lives out loud, and at the daughters trying to figure out what those names cost. If you missed the Broadway run, it is still a title worth tracking for future productions, because the questions it raises are not going anywhere.
Have you seen Liberation? What was your favorite moment or song? Let us know @bsb.insider on all major social media platforms. And keep an eye on Liberation’s official page for more information!
Book Review: ‘The Correspondent’ by Virginia Evans
