Word: wasserstein
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There has always been a feminist subtext to Wasserstein's plays, even in her earlier work when she relied on Jewish-mother jokes and collegiate sexual confusions for laughs. Her first success, Uncommon Women and Others, depicted a reunion of Mount Holyoke College alumnae six years after they have left the campus to make their way in the working world. The 1977 off-Broadway cast included Glenn Close, Jill Eikenberry and Swoosie Kurtz. Her 1983 hit comedy, Isn't It Romantic, which ran for two years off-Broadway, is a thinly veiled tale of Wasserstein's relations with...
Only in a written playscript does Wasserstein allow herself to be assertive. In conversation, she flees from all self-important declarations of artistic intention. It takes coaxing for Wasserstein just to admit that Heidi represents her bid "to demand attention and announce, 'I have something to say, and I want you to listen.' " She is much more comfortable recalling Heidi's early off-Broadway previews when she was scared that "all the people from Isn't It Romantic would show up waiting for the chicken jokes." Here her voice breaks into a hypertheatrical tone as she parodies the reaction...
Even today, there is something unreal for Wasserstein in seeing her name illuminated on a marquee in the heart of New York City's theater district. "I'm an off-Broadway baby," she explains. "When my friends and I write, we imagine small audiences." In fact, The Heidi Chronicles was originally written to be performed at the tiny, 156-seat Playwrights Horizon, the nurturing off-Broadway base camp for a generation of younger playwrights like Wasserstein. Only after the play opened at Playwrights last December to rave reviews and a sold-out three-month run were arrangements made to transport...
...entirely a natural migration. Even Wasserstein wonders if a play that includes a scene built around a 1970 feminist consciousness-rais ing group ("Either you shave your legs or you don't" is the refrain) and is filled with arcane political references can ever be commercially successful. "I'm not stupid," Wasserstein laughs. "I don't know if theater parties will say, 'Let's go to this. It's got a great Herbert Marcuse joke...
...York papers, as is the custom, chose to let their off- Broadway reviews stand. An "enlightening portrait of her generation," declared the Times, while Newsday poured on the laudatory adjectives: "smart, compassionate, witty, courageous." There were some sharp dissents. TIME's theater critic, William A. Henry III, complained that "Wasserstein has written mostly whiny and self-congratulatory cliches...