By Robert Hofler

When Bess Wohl’s “Liberation” opened Off Broadway all the way back in February, it would have been ridiculous to grace it with best-of superlatives. Now that “Liberation” has opened on Broadway this Tuesday at the James Earl Jones Theatre, it’s entirely apt to write that it’s the year’s best play. There are only a few other new plays to open in 2025 and I’ve seen most of them in previews. Bank on it: “Liberation” remains the best.

As playwrights go, Wohl doesn’t mess around. At the top of the evening, she brings on stage a narrator who’s even more direct and efficient in telling a story than the Stage Manager in “Our Town.” She is a young woman named Lizzie, whose mother (also named Lizzie) founded a women’s group in the year 1970. Women’s Lib? Consciousness raising? Even Lizzie Sr. wasn’t quite sure what these few women hoped to achieve by meeting once a week and talking about their lives in a school gymnasium. Tellingly, David Zinn’s set design loads the space with references to boys’ sports.