A WOMAN AMONG WOMEN at Lincoln Center Theater

Lincoln Center Theater’s new play, A Woman Among Women, is officially open at LCT’s Claire Tow Theater. A Woman Among Women is written by New York Times best-selling author Julia May Jonas marking her return to LCT3 and directed by Sarah Cameron Hughes.

A Woman Among Women stars Brittany K. Allen as ‘Christine,’ Gabriel Brown as ‘Roy, Tina Chilip as ‘Tina,’ Zoë Geltman as ‘Grace,’ Morgan Siobhan Green as ‘Rida/Trisha,’ Hannah Heller as ‘Sarah,’ LUCY KAMINSKY as ‘Tammy, Drew Lewis as ‘Lane,’ and Dee Pelletier as ‘Cleo.’

It’s a summer day in Northampton, Massachusetts and Cleo, founder of the local women’s wellness center, holds court in her backyard. As friends, family and neighbors pass through, the air hums with a tension that may destroy the community she’s worked so hard to build. See what the critics are saying…

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: While I wish that A Woman Among Women had embraced a single aesthetic approach and worn its inspiration more loosely, I admire how Jonas invites us to consider familiar conflicts in new ways. What are the challenges, both within our communities and our personal consciences, that would resonate with the mid-20th-century figures of Miller’s lifetime? And would female protagonists react any differently, with more nuance or less dogmatism? These are fascinating, even important questions — and Jonas poses them with considerable skill.

Deb Miller, DC Theater Arts: A Woman Among Women is a mixed bag, with acerbic humor, disturbing situations, and a final reckoning that shakes the community to its core, infused with musical numbers that lengthen the show and break the mood and narrative flow with little reason. But the main issue is one that will leave you deciding whose side you would take in this female reimagining of traditional male roles (despite the female nudity that still remains a commonplace in entertainment), which have dominated classic American drama.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: “A Woman Among Women” is not just an exercise in transposition; it takes on a life of its own.
When I saw this production in Brooklyn in 2024, I wondered whether I enjoyed it more because it was the first show in the Bushwick Starr’s new permanent venue — clean, open, well-lit, welcoming, yet an adventure (at least for me) to get to, on a dark and forbidding-looking block. I’ll admit that there is less of an adventure to go to a show at Lincoln Center. But as in Bushwick, under Sarah Hughes direction, the cast seems just to be hanging out in a backyard, sitting right next to members of the audience; they are able to seem casual during most of their time on stage, and playful during sudden, joyful musical interludes, as if they’re just living their lives. But they are at the same time persuasively inhabiting their characters. This makes a difference when the set suddenly transforms into something more formal, and the characters confront one another, revealing the kind of intractable moral dilemma to which Jonas is most drawn — which is how (as she tells us in her note) she and Miller “most align as artists.”

Caroline Cao, New York Theatre Guide: 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).

Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review: That said, to my old-school taste, the ambitious A Woman Among Women registers mostly as a terribly talky, at times even tedious, theater exercise that fails to engage pity or any emotion other than occasional confusion over who some of these people may be and what’s their relationship to the heroine, and why should I care?

Roma Torre, New York Stage Review: A program note says that the play asks what it means to inhabit a role within a community and to define oneself against or within expectations of others. It’s a vague notion and director Sarah Cameron Hughes’ staging doesn’t help to clarify the point of spending so much time on unrelated activity. The playing space – in the round with audience members seated along the periphery – offers no sense of time or place. The play begins as the actors enter from all sides setting up lawn chairs alongside the seated audience members. If intended to create a communal effect with the audience, it mostly causes confusion. And unlike in All My Sons, most of Jonas’ characters are peripheral to the story.