The kindergartners in the crowd at “She Persisted, The Musical” are unlikely to get the reference in the title, but then again they were toddlers at the time.
In 2017, when the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, shut down a speech by Elizabeth Warren on the Senate floor, he explained himself with words that feminists have flung back at him ever since: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”
Chelsea Clinton quickly responded with a children’s book, “She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World” — a cheerful, affirming collection of mini-biographies for little ones. But is it really the stuff of theater?
Indeed it is. “She Persisted, The Musical,” by Adam Tobin (script and lyrics) and Deborah Wicks La Puma (music), is an exuberant, time-traveling history lesson that instills confidence, too, encouraging girls to listen to their own voices and not be afraid of using them.
Directed and choreographed by MK Lawson for Atlantic for Kids, which recommends it for ages 5 and up, the play begins with a fourth-grade field trip to a women’s history museum. The teacher, Ms. Chan, played by Heather Sawyer as an endearingly irrepressible geek, wants to inspire Naomi (Amber Jaunai) and her classmates with stories of great achievement.
Things turn fantastical when Naomi slips into the past, where she meets a young Sonia Sotomayor (Jianzi Colón-Soto), intent on becoming a detective; Virginia Apgar (Amanda Corday), the physician whose namesake test for newborns occasions a charming baby-doll dance; and Ruby Bridges (Auberth Bercy), the first grader who in 1960 integrated a New Orleans school.
Best of all are a commanding, kind Harriet Tubman and an appealingly down-to-earth Florence Griffith Joyner, both played by the show’s M.V.P., Cynthia Nesbit, who is very funny as a museum guard, too.
The cast’s singing is not uniformly strong, and Saturday’s performance at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater suffered some technical hiccups. There is also a touch of what feels like product placement, when a character sits upstage reading “Ella Persistió,” the Spanish-language version of Clinton’s book.
Another moment stands out for its possibly unintentional message. When the astronaut Sally Ride (Corday) tells Naomi about sexist questions she got from the media, she’s right: The assumptions behind them (that women cry easily, for example) are dumb. That’s a perfectly fair point.
But the reporters asking those questions are women — a distinct minority in newsrooms in 1983, when Ride first went into space, and thus unlikely to be the main culprits. More troubling is the Ride character’s evident contempt for the press. At a time when children hear the president denounce “fake news,” is that an attitude this show wants to teach? (This is not, by the way, a reflection of the book, whose pantheon includes the investigative journalist Nellie Bly; she is not a character in the musical.)
For the most part, though, “She Persisted” cleverly conveys positive values. This is bouncy fun with a serious streak.
As a college-age Sotomayor sings, “It’s not enough to say that it’s always been this way. We have to be heard, and it’s plainly absurd to ignore half the world every day.”
And when the show finishes with a reprise of its defiant, triumphant anthem, “Walk On,” the optimistic takeaway for the youngest generation is clear: Persevere. You’ve got this.
She Persisted, The Musical
Through March 22 at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater, 336 West 20th Street, Manhattan; 866-811-4111, atlantictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
