Naked and Unafraid

How Dess Wonl's Liberation pulls off Broadway's most daring scene of the year.

- By Sara Holdren

Betsy Aidem, Adina Verson, Irene Sofia Lucio, Audrey Corsa, and Susannah Flood rehearsing the opening scene of Act Two.

LIBERATION opens at the James Earl Jones Theatre October 28.

CAUSES FOR HOPE can feel perilously scarce these days. In such a dire season of the spirit, it matters to hear from characters like the ones in Liberation, the extraordinary play by Bess Wohl transferring to Broadway in late October. Set in the 1970s at the meetings of a feminist consciousness-raising group—as well as in the present day, when a narrator (Susannah Flood) is telling the story of the group her mother founded—the show goes down like a bracing tonic, an antidote for the dark. It’s powered not by celebrities but by a company of superb New York theater regulars (the cast took home the Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble) and engages in both exquisite character study and fervent political conversation—a thrilling dose of which occurs at the start of the second act during a pivotal 15-minute scene in which six cast members are entirely naked.

Like all of Liberation, the scene is funny, contemplative, and paper-cut sharp, a coup de théâtre for reasons beyond its state of undress. The show's website discloses the nudity, and audience members are asked to put their phones in pouches during the performance, but even so, the actors tell me they've experienced a whole gamut of responses. "I remember this middle-aged woman was so scandalized," says Audrey Corsa. "Guys," says her castmate Irene Sofia Lucio, raising a practiced eyebrow, "we once heard the word titties!" Everyone groans. But, adds Flood, "the majority of people are swept up in the magic of what the scene accomplishes." "Yes," say several voices, one of them Betsy Aidem's: "They don't want someone to break the spell."