“Two Steps Forward, One Step Back” – that’s the refrain of this little-known musical’s opening and closing numbers, and it refers to the herky-jerky progress of women’s rights.
The show, conceived by Joan Micklin Silver and Julianne Boyd and first performed in 1992, presents a series of sketches that largely satirize the state of being a woman in a patriarchal, capitalist society. The ensemble consists of five performers – Natalie Hatcher, Kristiann Menotiades, Delilah Picart, Saige Smith, and Becki Toth – all of whom play multiple roles in different vignettes, as if in an evening of SNL sketches, but with songs (two understudies, Maya Fullard and Michaela Isenberg, also appear in the final number). The various scenes take place in a series of disparate locations and don’t naturally come together as a whole, but director Nancy McNulty and scenic designer Johnmichael Bohach have corralled them together in a 1990s mall – replete with the kind of turquoise and pink color scheme you might associate with, say, San Diego’s Horton Plaza – a choice that makes sense given the running throughline of ads that pressure women to purchase beauty products (Becki Toth has a lot of fun impersonating Madonna, Queen Elizabeth, and the Pope offering women power and salvation via coverup creams).
Topics attacked by the various sketches include ageism, racism, double standards, toxic competition between women, dieting and beauty standards, single motherhood, the erasure of women in history, and the glass ceiling. Some of the best vignettes are also the most biting: in one, a film noir parody entitled “Women Behind Desks,” a graduate of the Harvard Business School (Smith) finds herself condemned, along with other highly accomplished women, to an indeterminate stint in “Middle Management Prison” (ouch), and in another, a group of pregnant women who have been sent to the Clarence Thomas Home for Unwed Mothers feel the full brunt of right-wing forced-birth policies (double ouch). Not all of the scenes are comic: the number “Wheels,” performed beautifully by Smith, traces a life that starts out with big dreams and ends in homelessness; and “Baby” and “What Did I Do Right?” (featuring Smith and Toth) consider the anguishes of unplanned and single motherhood.
The five performers are well up to the challenge of the variety of characters and vocal styles, and each has her own standout moment; in particular, Hatcher stuns when she pulls out all the vocal stops in the finale, “Lifelines.” And while the cast is all female, music director Douglas Levine and bassist Paul Thompson get roped into the action occasionally to stand in for needed men, especially of the sensitive new age type.
Perhaps this is just the mood I’m in right now, but I found this to be a rather angry little show, expressing – in a good way, in a timely way – a lot of the frustration and bewilderment I feel as I watch women’s rights get eroded, yet again. The fact that this show was written over thirty years ago, however, made me feel that its optimism – “two steps forward!” – is undue; for our times, the show’s underlying bitterness feels more apposite.