She Did All That - Betty Ford: Speaking Out, Saving Lives

Writer-director-producer Lisa Rafferty, co-creator of last year's documentary play "Finish Line," about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, presents "She Did All That - Betty Ford: Speaking Out, Saving Lives," a new play in the same genre about a feisty First Lady and champion for women's health, general equality, and the promise of an America that embraces modernity. We're not talking about Michelle Obama or Jacquelyn Kennedy. The First Lady in question is - wait for it - Betty Ford.

It may seem strange from today's perspective to see the wife of a Republican president speaking out for the Equal Rights Amendment, a woman's right to choose, LGBTQ equality before the law, and the destigmatization of addiction, but it's a timely reminder that the GOP we see today - an oppressive and not-so-subtly anti-everything-not-straight-white-and-male club - was once a party of principles rather than one driven by punitive urges and a thirst for power for its own sake.

Betty Ford, played here memorably by Paula Plum, is unapologetic about the fact that she has an opinion. When she learns, in 1974 - when she's already Second Lady of the United States - that she has breast cancer and needs to submit to a mastectomy and radiation therapy, Betty sees no point in mincing words: She's open and up front about the nature of her health crisis at a time when American prudery avoided any frank discussion of such things. Her openness and her status as the wife of a top governmental official makes her a role model, which gives untold numbers of American women implicit permission to take control of their own health, learning to self-check and get screened.

Seeing the tremendous force for good her platform could be, Betty Ford doesn't stop there. In the wake of Watergate, when Gerald Ford becomes president and Betty assumes the role of First Lady, she speaks up fearlessly in support of the Equal Rights Amendment which, at the time, is only four states shy of ratification. She goes on television to give an interview in which she calmly says she'd accept learning that her daughter was having premarital sex. She speaks forcefully on how the newly-legal right of a women to choose whether or not to continue with a pregnancy is something that needs to be brought "out of the backwoods and into the hospital, where it belongs." The so-called culture of life, of course, cannot stand to hear such endorsements of "immorality," and self-appointed guardians of culture - including Maria von Trapp, played by Evelyn Holley, and Phyllis Schlafly, played by Erin Eva Butcher - speak out; Schlafly, in fact, led the backlash that derailed the ERA, and the amendment was never ratified.

Even after the Fords left the White House, Betty Ford continued to exercise the sort of self-awareness and self-knowledge that led to contributions of compassion at a high level. Her own struggle with painkillers and alcohol led to the creation of the Betty Ford Center, which catered to stars and everyday people alike and pioneered gender-specific modes of treatment for addiction.

Rafferty's script adopts an expository style, giving a large speaking part to a Historian (Dave Daly) who explains the story beat by beat and summons forth various players to elaborate. The Fords' children all weigh in (Gabriel Graetz, Thomas Grenon, and Jared Reinfeld play the Fords' sons; Amie Lyle plays their daughter Susan); celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor (Butcher), Mary Tyler Moore (Holley), and Grace Slick (Kennedy Elsey) have walk-on parts; and a trio of White House reporters step in from time to time to make sure we have the relevant historical information we need to understand the play's context. (Several local celebrities feature here: Boston theater and film critic Joyce Kulhawik, broadcast journalist Michele Lazcano, and sports reporter Jayme Parker will serially take the role of "Reporter #1" throughout the play's run.)

This being a "documentary" play as opposed to a dramatization, many of the spoken passages that aren't intended to distill information come from a variety of sources: Interviews, letters, speeches. Betty Ford's life - from 1974 on, anyway - is presented as a series of facts and anecdotes, all of which conveys perfectly well the breadth and importance of her accomplishments, and here are several rousing speeches that are given a fair amount of time and significant emotional payoffs. Even though this is a documentary and one goes into the play knowing it, one occasionally misses the juice and heat of drama and can't help thinking how a central conflict could shape the material. Phyllis Schlafly's focus on preventing the ERA, for instance: We don't really learn about that, or about Schlafly's role in frustrating the hopes for equality of generations of women, though we do hear Betty Ford reference the ERA several times as one of her own signature issues. That said, however, the work does serve as an omnibus of Betty Ford's impact. "She Did All That" is thorough, and illuminating.

Even as we might feel a sense of nostalgia mixed with grief for the high hopes that colored Betty Ford's era - hopes now partly fulfilled, but still too often dashed - Rafferty's script and direction leave no doubt about the riptide of patriarchal privilege that Betty Ford was compelled to swim against. Politicos and White house staffers - future vice present Dick Cheney among them - take Gerald Ford to task for not muzzling his wife (as a man of that time should, evidently), which is something Gerald has no interest in doing. (Schlafly, by contrast, made it a point when speaking in public to thank her husband for allowing her to express an opinion.)

If there is any single story arc that feels powerfully complete and resonant throughout, it's the love affair between Gerald and Betty. Gerald Ford - Plum's husband Richard Snee takes the role - is everything the current president is not: Concerned, compassionate, a statesman, and a gentleman. There's not a trace of the "Saturday Night Life" caricature of Gerald Ford as a blithering stumblebum in this depiction. Plum and Snee bring the chemistry of a genuine couple to the stage, and it's obvious to see how and why Gerald bored his wife and refused to entertain the idea of stifling her. (At one point, with a smile, Gerald offers a post-interview analysis to Betty, reckoning that her comments just cost them twenty million votes.)

Rafferty works with an all-female design team in celebration of and solidarity with Betty Ford's clear-eyed, passionate, and highly articulate concerns regarding women's health, access, and status, but this is far from a work that shuns men. Composed of many skillfully fit moving parts, this is an illustration of the kind of creative village that brings into being a new play. To be compassionate is patriotic, and to be an American female in the very best tradition is to insist that your voice be heard and your contributions taken seriously. How this nation tends, again and again, to forget that is mystifying; thankfully, we have had generation after generation of smart, strong women - Betsy Ross, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and, yes, Betty Ford among them - to keep us honest.

You want to make America great again? You have to start where greatness is found. Here is but one example.

"She Did All That" plays through July 8 at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre. Tickets and more information at https://www.birchtreeproductions.company/shows