Women for votes

Set in a comfortably furnished New York drawing‑room, this three‑act farce opens with Mrs. Tilsbury returning from a suffrage meeting, eager to discuss the absurdities she’s heard about women’s legal standing. She and her longtime friend Mrs. Brown trade witty barbs over ancestral pedigrees, bridge prizes, and the practicalities of campaigning, all while a pampered pig named Cochon snoozes at their feet. Their banter quickly reveals the tangled family dynamics—step‑relations, inheritances, and a lingering portrait of the first Mrs. Tilsbury—that fuel both the comedy and the underlying tension.

The play uses sharp, satirical dialogue to lampoon the social expectations placed on women, juxtaposing earnest reformist zeal with the characters’ everyday concerns about money, status, and domestic convenience. As Mrs. Tilsbury enlists Mrs. Brown’s reluctant assistance, listeners are drawn into a portrait of early‑20th‑century New York society where humor exposes the contradictions of a movement still finding its voice.