This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on November 9, 2026. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.
Today’s Toppman on the Arts is sponsored by The Mint Museum. See more than 100 stunning works by designer Judith Leiber in the exhibition "Brilliant by Design: The Handbags of Judith Leiber," on view now at Mint Museum Randolph.
Review: Three Bone Theatre’s stirring production of ‘Liberation’ looks back at the women’s rights movement of the 1970s
In “Liberation,” six women come together to fight for equality in the 1970s in a gymnasium basement. (Photo by Tim Coffey Photography)
by Lawrence Toppman
I wondered if playwright Bess Wohl set “Liberation” in Ohio because our vice president, the last person in America I can see upholding women’s rights, represented that state in the U.S. Senate. Yet she wrote the first draft of this drama, which won both the Tony Award for best play and the Pulitzer Prize this year, back in 2023.
The Brooklyn native was inspired partly by her mother, who worked in New York for Ms. Magazine and has the most important role in the narrative. Wohl was also inspired by Judith Ezekiel’s book “Feminism in the Heartland,” which explored how Dayton, Ohio, was part of the national debate about women’s rights in the 1970s. The resulting play, now getting a stirring production at Three Bone Theatre, shows how far we have and haven’t come in my lifetime toward equality of the sexes.
It leaps backward and forward across half a century, with middle-aged Lizzie (Rachel Dawson) interviewing survivors from a consciousness-raising group founded by her late mom (played in flashbacks by Dawson). Lizzie addresses us directly at the top of the show, setting the tone for what follows: wry humor followed by thunderclaps of sadness. How autobiographical is all this? Well, Lizzie and Bess are both nicknames for Elizabeth, the playwright’s given name.
Six women assemble in a gymnasium basement in 1970 to plan protests and other actions. Dora (Emma Kitchin) has come by accident: She thought this was a knitting circle, but her boss’s sexist behavior convinces her to stay. Margie (Jenny Hubbard, superb in the two longest monologues of the play) has temporarily fled a maddeningly heedless, unwittingly selfish husband.
Volatile Susan (Lauren Pavlacka) is permanently on the run from a father who threw her out. Sicilian immigrant Isadora (Callie Richards) has made a green-card marriage and exploits her sexuality uncomfortably to advance in the workplace. Celeste, the only African American (Valerie Thames), is proud of an intelligence she has had too few chances to show.
Our narrator ponders what went wrong with the women’s movement, how solidarity turned to sourness and sniping. The upcoming marriage of one participant throws up barriers among them here, as they debate whether self-realization and conjugal relations can co-exist. Race enters into it — a Black female character tangential to the story tells Celeste “You’re either with them or with us” — as do fears of losing whatever security tedious jobs and worn-out marriages provide.
In the play’s most discussed scene, the six lounge around nude at the top of Act Two, as Ms. Magazine has instructed them to do. Three Bone provides plastic pouches at intermission for audience members to seal up cellphones, yet the scene is neither prurient nor uncomfortable. As the characters discuss positive and negative aspects of body images, we relax with them; their nakedness becomes emotional more than physical.
I was a senior in high school when the story begins, so it’s a memory play for me. For someone from the next generation or two, it could be a history play. Either way, it’s painfully compelling, due both to Wohl’s writing and the universally credible performances. And it’s still timely.
For every dollar earned by men with full-time jobs in the first quarter of this year, women with full-time jobs earned an average of 84 cents. UNICEF has ranked parental leave and childcare policies in 41 high-income countries and put the United States 40th, just ahead of Slovakia. One character in the play rightly tells Lizzie she’s asking the wrong question: She should wonder not why a movement disintegrated but why society continues to fail its participants.
Yet “Liberation” ends with a note of reconciliation and hope that’s especially timely after Tuesday’s midterms. Amy Acton just became the first woman to be elected governor of Ohio, something unthinkable in 1970. Kristina Knickerbocker even ousted incumbent Mike Turner in the U.S. House race to represent Dayton. Coalitions come together and fall apart, but the fight goes on.
IF YOU’RE GOING
Three Bone Theatre’s “Liberation” runs at The Arts Factory, 1545 W. Trade St., through Nov. 22. Shows are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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