All These Women (review)

Spoilers ahoy! 

Honestly I've got some mixed feelings about All These Women at Theatre 40.  

First, and very nearly least to be fair, is my personal problems with Reader's Theatre.  Reared and believing firmly that "show don't tell" is an excellent rule-of-thumb for all theatre, I react badly to a format which by its very nature is "tell don't show."  At least a lot of the time.  

This creates some problems especially in Act One, when so few scenes take place, as opposed to the equivalent of data dumps.  We open in the year 1913 when for the first time in decades the Democrats control both houses of Congress as well as the White House (with the newly elected Confederate sympathizer Woodrow Wilson).  The Suffragist Movement--aimed at gaining the vote for American women--have been struggling for years, even generations.  Here is their best chance!  But they come up against Wilson's utter disinterest in their cause.  More, the movement is starting a schism between an Old Guard and some Young Lionesses over style, policy, and frankly authority.  

Now, this should be exciting stuff, but as written--in Act One, let me say that very loudly--we mostly have one character, Miss Burns (played by Kristen Towers Rowles) telling us what is going on.  Mostly.  She does her best, and her best is very good indeed.  More, the rest of the cast are good, conveying quite a lot but without a lot to convey in the script.

What compels in Act One is the history involved, the genuine charm and talents of the cast, coupled with the current context of women's rights under direct attack.

But Act Two--wow what a difference!  Here, events themselves are far more dramatic, up to and including disturbing levels of violence (Wilson got Congress to pass a law making criticizing the government a felony!  The parallels are more than disturbing.)  People suffer and die, making the second act a roller coaster for the mind and heart!  I felt myself flinching in reaction to these characters who, by now, I have gotten to know and care for.  Their arrests, confinements, actual torture up to and including forced feeding (if you don't know--this is a humiliating and extremely painful process).  It creates a horrific combination of deja vu and premonitions.

In short, while Act One remains seriously (but not disasterously) flawed, Act Two becomes a nail-biting struggle made somehow more intense because we know how it ends.

Kudos to the talents of April Audia, Todd Andrew Ball, Jessica Kent, Daniel Leslie, Lary Ohlson, Anica Petrovie, and Michele Schultz.  

All These Women plays Thursday through Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays a 2pm through October 19, 2025 at Theatre40, the| Mary Levin Cutler Theatre | Beverly Hills High School, 241 S. Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills CA 90212