'A Woman Among Women' Off-Broadway review — 'All My Daughters' (in crisis)

Read our review of A Woman Among Women off Broadway, a new play by Julia May Jonas that responds to Arthur Miller's classic 1947 drama All My Sons.

Summary

• Julia May Jonas’ A Woman Among Women reimagines Arthur Miller’s patriarchal All My Sons as a matriarchal story
• Cleo’s status as a community fixture is rocked by a secret involving one of her two adult daughters
• The moving play features a strong ensemble but a few hit-and-miss experimental elements
• The show is recommended for fans of Miller’s work and of Jonas’s other work like the novel Vladimir and its TV adaptation

Actress Dee Pelletier disarms you into believing her Cleo, a 60something psychologist with a wellness business called the Center, is an immaculate pillar of her diverse Northampton, Massachusetts community. Tucked in Lincoln Center Theater’s Claire Tow Theater, Cleo’s lawn is as welcoming as her warmhearted demeanor. But Julia May Jonas’s play A Woman Among Women, a matriarchal reimagining of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, unravels a fractured portrait of a community mother figure.

Director Sarah Cameron Hughes opens the play with deceptive idyll, starting with an old-fashioned, sitcom-esque number with a corny title drop (original music is by Brian Cavanagh-Strong). Dominating conversations between Cleo and the neighbors is the subject of her bipolar adult daughter, the unseen Josephine, imprisoned for beating and disabling an old man in a road rage-related outburst. Jo is like the cast-aside child of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Omelas, locked away for supposed societal benefit, while Cleo’s younger daughter, Grace (a dreamy Zoë Geltman), operates as the “good girl," assisting her mother at the Center but wanting for Cleo’s love. Grace's character takes on a psychosexual tone when she proclaims her attraction to Jo’s estranged husband, Roy (Gabriel Brown), who is raising his and Jo’s son alone, as if to subconsciously claim the attention Jo once had.

Although it takes awkward clumps of exposition to explain, the neighborly ecosystem rests on its strong ensemble performances, with costume designer Wendy Yang accentuating their personalities with distinct, artsy choices. Cleo’s backyard community consists of her platonic life partner and co-parent, Tina (Tina Chilip, capturing a free-spirited teacher); the lawyer Christine (Brittany K. Allen) and her wife, Tammy (Lucy Kaminsky); Center employee Sarah (Hannah Heller) and her musician househusband Lane (Drew Lewis); and 8-year-old rapscallion Rida (Morgan Siohban Green, who seamlessly doubles as Roy’s mother, Trisha).

Less organized than the impeccable casting is Hughes’s experimental direction. On Brittany Vasta’s minimalist set, suggesting Cleo’s backyard, actors frequently sit on lawn chairs among the first row of the audience-in-the-round. While ingenious to incorporate theatregoers among Cleo’s backyard guests, the effect is more fussy than cozy, as the audience inadvertently pulls focus from the performers. In one sudden surrealistic touch, Cleo daydreams of bonneted pioneers dancing and mass-dying of consumption. It’s a black comedic historical reenactment that (in just one interpretation) suggests a disillusionment in the neighborhood, but comes off more weird than illuminating.

The experimental elements are cluttered until the final act’s transition to a traditional proscenium stage that brings Cleo’s secret culpability — a violation of her then-pregnant daughter’s bodily autonomy — to the fore. In All My Sons, the central Joe Keller closes his conscience to his fatal actions out of self- and familial preservation. Jonas presents Cleo as a flip side of the coin, the mother-psychologist convincing herself that her deception is an unpleasant duty for town-wide safety. A Woman Among Women asks us to weigh out the societal and personal pressures that influence a mother to commit such an act.

A Woman Among Women summary

Cleo, a widowed licensed psychiatrist who runs a wellness clinic, is a bastion in a diverse community of Northampton, Massachusetts. As she engages in backyard chats with her friends, neighbors, and clients, haunting the serenity is the incarceration of her bipolar and PTSD-ridden daughter Josephine and a mystery surrounding her medication. Tina and the lawyer Christine fight to reduce Jo’s sentence, while Cleo and Roy stubbornly believe Jo’s incarceration is a necessity. An uncovered secret then recontextualizes Jo’s violent breakdown and forces Cleo into a reckoning.

The play is a matriarchal riff on Arthur Miller’s 1947 drama All My Sons, and the title references a description of All My Sons's lead character as “a man among men.”

A Woman Among Women debuted at the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn in 2024 before its current run, part of Lincoln Center Theater's LCT3 program for new works.

What to expect at A Woman Among Women

In the staging of few songs, actors play instruments, and a glockenspiel chime signifies each character's introduction. The actor and audience placements can affect sight lines, especially when a speaking actor is seated in front of a section of the audience, leaving the people behind them reliant on voice to recognize the characters. Seated toward the back, I had trouble making out the performers' heads at times.

There are a few moments involving audience participation, including the distribution of Munchkins to the front row and a rhythm-making game to underscores a set reveal before the final act. Theatregoers seated in front of the closed curtain will be moved, as if the play tidies and cleanses itself before unmasking a tragedy.

What audiences are saying about A Woman Among Women

Theatregoers have shared their views on A Woman Among Women, both in its Lincoln Center Theater and earlier Bushwick Starr runs, on platforms like Mezzanine and Show-Score.

• “The thoughtful elegance of the production lifts the whole enough that I don’t really mind the loose ends. What sticks is the small, human details: The perfectly chosen shoes for every character in Wendy Yang’s costume design.” - Exeunt review of the Bushwick run by Loren Noveck
• “A funny, fascinating show with terrific acting, a few nice plot twists, and some creative staging.” - Show-Score user Lee J Knob
• “Still thinking about Cleo and community versus personal accountability.” - My +1 at the show

Who should see A Woman Among Women

• Fans of Julia May Jonas’s novel Vladimir and its Netflix adaptation, or of her 2022 play Your Own Personal Exegesis at Lincoln Center Theater, will appreciate her gift for showing the interiority of her characters here, too.
• Fans of Arthur Miller works, especially All My Sons, would be curious how Jonas and director Sarah Cameron Hughes riff on a classic with a matriarchal lens, exploring how each of her Miller-based counterparts respond to and defy gender conventions.
• Students of topics like the carceral system, mental illness, bodily autonomy, accountability, and violence will want to see how they intersect in the core conflict of A Woman Among Women.
• Fans of Off-Broadway stalwarts will find a treasure trove in the ensemble, including Dee Pelletier (August: Osage County) executing headstrong conviction blemished with self-doubt, Tina Chilip (Jesa) with her infectious chattiness, and the romantic Zoë Geltman.
• Readers of Ursula K. Le Guin’s "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" might see A Woman Among Women as a modernized retelling.

Learn more about A Woman Among Women off Broadway

An idyllic lawn drama slowly sprouts the thorns of a tragedy. Centered by Dee Pelletier amid the true ensemble cast, A Woman Among Women swims through puzzling experimental choices before it lands with a bang.

Learn more and get A Woman Among Women tickets on New York Theatre Guide. A Woman Among Women is at the Claire Tow Theater through June 28.

Photo credit: A Women Among Women off Broadway. (Photos by Maria Baranova)