The Cast Photo by Rebecca J Michelson

The "what if" kickoff is this: What if we were to start the tale in the 1890s when women in the U.S. generally were burdened with the expectations of the cult of domesticity and the "virtues" of piety, purity, and submissiveness to their fathers and husbands. And what if all the men on earth died suddenly, leaving a world composed entirely of women who find themselves in the position of creating a new social order?

The notion of a fully or mostly single-sex society has been dealt with before, from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1915 feminist utopian novel "Herland" to the more recent comic book series and short-lived FX TV show "Y: The Last Man." But Maney has provided her own unique theme and variations here.

The 90-minute play is divided into three parts, each of them separated by a century in time. Part I, which carries the same name as the overall title, opens with a group of three women. For all appearances, they might be extras from "The Gilded Age," sitting around a table, sipping cups of tea, and eyeing a fourth empty chair as they await the arrival of the last member of their party, about whom they casually gossip.

The three are Ruth (Julia Lester, a Tony nominee for her portrayal of Little Red in the 2022 Broadway revival of Into the Woods), Ruth's younger sister Mary (Zoe Dean), and the scholarly Eden (Mariyea). The awaited fourth member is Victoria (Sophie Zmorrod), who prefers to be called "Vic" now that she has eschewed corsets and gowns for her late husband's trousers and shirts. ("Wearing George's clothes," she will explain after a while, "doesn't make me feel closer to him. They make me feel closer to me.")

Vic is late to the gathering because she has been busily preparing sandwiches for the four of them. What kind of sandwiches? Well, remember those men who have dropped dead? How might one get rid of all those bodies? Hmm? To quote Sweeney Todd's Mrs. Lovett, "Good, you got it."

OK. Cute gimmick. Yet if that were the be-all and end-all to Hungry Women, this would be pretty much of a one-trick pony of a play, rather like Trey Parker's Cannibal! The Musical that saw a brief Off-Broadway run 25 years ago. But apart from food, what these women hunger for is freedom from the stifling expectations that have defined their lives. This is the real kickoff to Hungry Women, which takes this premise and runs with it in a great zigzag across time.

From the American version of the Victorian Age, we zip to 1991 and Part II: "Curious Women." We are in a schoolroom where a class in "AP Herstory" is taking place. On this day, it is being presided over by a substitute teacher named Rebecca, played by Lester. Her 18-year-old students are Melanie (Dean), Elizabeth (Mariyea), and Valerie (Zmorrod), all of them bright, vivacious, and immensely curious about the "history" that preceded the "herstory" they grew up learning. It gets a little convoluted here, but the group winds up participating in a séance that summons up the disembodied voices of men from the distant past.

What comes out of this becomes global news and takes us into Part III: "Scared Women." This one takes place in 2091 during a meeting of the ruling World Council. In attendance are the same quartet of women, this time named Regina, Miranda, Eleanor, and Violet. Here, we find ourselves still in a women's world, reproduction without the participation of men having long been dealt with. But the tone suggests that a bit of "1984" and "The Handmaid's Tale" have crept in for the purported sake of keeping things rolling along at an even keel, while Violet offers up a whopper of a surprise that strongly suggests that change is in the air.

As you might imagine, there's a whole lotta shaking going on in just 90 minutes. The playwright and director Daniella Caggiano have done a surprisingly good job of managing all the moving parts within an overall logical framework, while the game and talented cast members (who sometimes take turns addressing us directly) manage to separate the Vics from the Valeries and the Violets as they pull us along through the centuries.