It is of course Curry who is the star, present in every scene, wise-cracking, showing us what might be going on behind the façade of easy-to-espouse yet difficult-to-live concepts. He is wickedly funny, sexy and absurd by turns, with a strong voice that is startlingly human (smoking a joint, drinking bourbon, and popping pills… “I take them for my back, okay?” she hisses. “You try holding up that torch!”).

The show is frenetic but fun and packed with fascinating historical facts. Libby (Brandon Curry) sets the audience straight from the get-go. “Honey, where is your suspension of disbelief?” she asks.

The comedic exhaustion the Statue of Liberty feels as she has to handle the voices in her head as to who she is, defined by everybody from an equally chatty statue of Sojourner Truth to a Texas school teacher, give this production directed by Janice J. Goldberg, a roller coaster style pacing with absurdity and sentimentality offering a compelling interpretation of these confusing times that are filled with hope and fear.

I was reminded of Wicked while watching Liberty Talks: both take an iconic figure and peek behind a glossy façade to find the real story of how they came to be, full of contradictions and ironies. There is much that is disillusioning in Rojas’s play, just as there is in the American Dream. The land of the free is a promise that is often kept and often broken. It’s more of an ongoing struggle, and that’s exactly what Liberty Talks captures on a very personal level.