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‘Suffs’ Review: Broadway Musical About Women’s Fight for the Vote Gets Thrilling and Entertaining Musicalization

Creator-star Shaina Taub's musical about women's march to the vote gets a thrilling and entertaining musicalization.

Also adding variety is Taub’s rich musical palette that ranges from Tin Pan Alley to a dynamic “I want” song for Paul (“Finish the Fight”) to recitative (aka rap), and limiting the anthems to special moments. Thanks to the specificity of the writing, music and lyrics and a remarkable ensemble of women and nonbinary actors, the multitude of characters in this densely packed historic narrative are, if not deeply, then at least reasonably well-defined and relatable with their personal doubts, fears and triumphs. Instead of gangs of taunting men from an earlier version of the show, Taub now reduces the male naysayers to the singular figure of a snide, slippery and condescending Wilson (Grace McLean in man-drag, doing a dazzling vaudevillian turn in “Ladies.”).

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