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.)įor the most part, though, “She Persisted” cleverly conveys positive values. More troubling is the Ride character’s evident contempt for the press. That’s a perfectly fair point.īut 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.
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. 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.Īnother moment stands out for its possibly unintentional message. The cast’s singing is not uniformly strong, and Saturday’s performance at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater suffered some technical hiccups. 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.īest 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. Chan, played by Heather Sawyer as an endearingly irrepressible geek, wants to inspire Naomi (Amber Jaunai) and her classmates with stories of great achievement.
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.
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