Interesting timing: We saw the hit Broadway musical “Suffs” three days after the Democrats concluded their nationally-televised convention, and the resonance was unmistakable. While one was a theatrical treatment of the women’s suffrage movement a century ago, and the other a thoroughly modern political rally, there was a persistent echo of issues and a take-it-to-the streets vibe.

There was, in fact, crossover language. Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala’s Harris’ repeated vow, “We’re not going back,” perfectly fit the theme of “Suffs,” of the long struggle of women working against generational, racial and class divides in pursuit of the right to vote. And the DNC’s opening-night speech by former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton included a direct quote from the “Suffs” closing number, “Keep Marching:” “Progress is possible, not guaranteed.” (Clinton, it turns out, is one of a team of “Suffs” producers.)

The play, like the convention, addressed the stalking of gender equality, touching on same-sex marriage, racism and the continuum of foot-dragging by a patriarchal society. Tony Award winner Shaina Taub—who wrote the book, music and lyrics for “Suffs”—was, in the title role, singing the same songs the conventioneers had heard.

To wit: “Let Mother Vote;” “Finish the Fight;” “The March (We Demand Equality);” “Worth It;” “Show Them Who You Are;” “How Long?;” “The Young Are at the Gates” and some 20 other tunes, including a declaration of refusal to “Wait My Turn.”

Woodrow Wilson, President during the suffrage fight, was depicted in the musical as “a cartoon fop,” as a New York Times review put it, “too silly to take seriously.” Wilson indeed was long opposed to women’s suffrage until he saw it as vital to winning World War I, shortly before it became law in 1920. And, though he was a leading architect of the League of Nations and considered a progressive on such matters as foreign policy, Wilson also authorized segregation in the federal bureaucracy and gave off fumes of racism.

There is one number in the show, the duet “If We Were Married,” which hammered home restrictive 1916 laws even as it referenced 2024 conservative policies on reproductive freedom:

He: If we were married, we’d fill out our family and life would be simply sublime….

She: If we were married, I’d churn out your children ‘cause contraception’s a federal crime….

A hundred years on, with clear advancements in society, certain fundamental aspects and patterns nevertheless have endured, including current reports of voter suppression. It was French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr who wrote, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”—“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

That was in 1849. Given that truth of retarded evolution, “Suffs”—fun entertainment, for sure—broadcast the same frustrations (amid hope) repeatedly raised this month by Clinton, Harris et al.