La Salpetriere presented by Taffety Punk at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop

DC Theater Arts - Recommended

"...Helen Reddy’s 1972 hit “I Am Woman” doesn’t appear in La Salpêtrière — Kelsey Mesa’s sensationally savvy new play about uppity women branded as hysterics — but the song’s theme of feminist resistance hums like an undertone throughout. Over the course of 90 captivating minutes in the play’s surprisingly funny world premiere at Taffety Punk, three women consigned to a 19th-century asylum for hysterics are put through their patriarchal paces by a cocky male shrink until finally they revolt. By literally roaring."