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Moments shared made my heart ache. Beautiful.
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The Heidi Chronicles: Uncommon Women and Others & Isn't It Romantic
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The graduating seniors of a Seven Sisters college, trying to decide whether to pattern themselves after Katharine Hepburn or Emily Dickinson. Two young women besieged by the demands of mothers, lovers, and careers—not to mention a highly persistent telephone answering machine—as they struggle to have it all. A brilliant feminist art historian trying to keep her bearings and her sense of humor on the elevator ride from the radical sixties to the heartless eighties. Wendy Wasserstein's characters are so funny, so many-sided, and so real that we seem to know them from their Scene One entrances, though the places they go are invariably surprising. And these three plays— Uncommon Women and Others , Isn't It Romantic , and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heidi Chronicles —manage to engage us heart, mind, and soul on such a deep and lasting level that they are already recognized as classics of the modern theater.
249 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,1988
This edition
- Format
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249 pages, Paperback
- Published
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July 2, 1991 by Vintage
- ISBN
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9780679734994
- ASIN
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0679734996
- Language
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English
About the author
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Wendy Wasserstein was an award-winning American playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. She was the recipient of the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
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Community Reviews
Rating(4.2 / 5.0, 91 votes)
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91 reviews All reviews
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All I have to say, is that I really want to direct this play...THE HEIDI CHRONICLES, and that's saying a lot because I shy away from realism like the plague, but...I love this play. I love it on so many levels. I love the characters...the men, the women...I love the structure...I love its epic scope...and I love Wendy Wasserstein for writing this.
5/7/19
I re-read this play with my students at SUNY Sullivan, as a part of our annual reading series to decide the next school year season. Our theme is the "Spirit of 1969". I had remembered how much I loved this play and that I had wanted to direct it from my first reading in 2010, and I wasn't disappointed in its re-reading. I also adored that the mixed age and gender of my students enjoyed the dialogue and the story, as well.
5/7/19
I re-read this play with my students at SUNY Sullivan, as a part of our annual reading series to decide the next school year season. Our theme is the "Spirit of 1969". I had remembered how much I loved this play and that I had wanted to direct it from my first reading in 2010, and I wasn't disappointed in its re-reading. I also adored that the mixed age and gender of my students enjoyed the dialogue and the story, as well.
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Uncommon Women... is my favorite of the 3, followed by Heidi Chronicles. Isn't it Romantic was a little sub-par, especially after reading the two others, which were so wonderful.
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Love me some plays by Wasserstein. She's very funny in that wry way women have, the one that says you have to laugh at this crap or you will be out on the streets killing catcallers.
Or is that just me?
Library copy
Or is that just me?
Library copy
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These plays are not aging well. Many pop cultural references that the reader has to look up that turn out to not be particularly relevant to the story. Comedies of manners about men and women that are of their time/place. I kept trying to imagine producing this play today and it was a mystery how audiences would respond.
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Here we are twenty years later, still trying to figure out if we can "have it all..."
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The best part of a good collection is watching a writer's voice develop over time. Reading Uncommon Women, I thought, "This is nice, I guess: kind of like a Seinfeld episode: mildly amusing, with very random characters who talk like people really talk, and nothing actually happens." By Isn't It Romantic, I was thinking, "Well, she's good at capturing a particular historical moment and showing how women think and feel, but she's not actually making me feel anything. She's good, but she's no Jane Austen." But by the time I finished The Heidi Chronicles, I was up to, "Well, damn. I may have to revise my thinking on that Jane Austen thing."
Each of these plays is interesting in its own right, following bright young women of Wasserstein's generation who graduated from the best colleges, filled with feminist ideals about having it all--marriage, kids, and fulfilling careers--only to find themselves in their mid-thirties with little if anything to show for it. Their careers are not as far along as they once dreamed. They struggle with singlehood or with settling for men who secretly want to marry Donna Reed. And despite the professed values of the Feminist Movement, they're beset by the cattiness of other women. Wasserstein's heroines are struggling with the gulf between the ideals of feminism and the realities of life.
The Heidi Chronicles is clearly the star of the collection: the characters feel like people, not stock types, their pain pulls at the heart strings, and the gay character, Peter, gives the play further depth by pointing out to Heidi that women are not the only ones struggling to be seen and respected, and dreams aren't the only things dying in New York in the late 1980s. Wasserstein has captured something very powerful here, and, like Jane Austen, I wish she could have lived longer and had the chance to write much, much more.
Each of these plays is interesting in its own right, following bright young women of Wasserstein's generation who graduated from the best colleges, filled with feminist ideals about having it all--marriage, kids, and fulfilling careers--only to find themselves in their mid-thirties with little if anything to show for it. Their careers are not as far along as they once dreamed. They struggle with singlehood or with settling for men who secretly want to marry Donna Reed. And despite the professed values of the Feminist Movement, they're beset by the cattiness of other women. Wasserstein's heroines are struggling with the gulf between the ideals of feminism and the realities of life.
The Heidi Chronicles is clearly the star of the collection: the characters feel like people, not stock types, their pain pulls at the heart strings, and the gay character, Peter, gives the play further depth by pointing out to Heidi that women are not the only ones struggling to be seen and respected, and dreams aren't the only things dying in New York in the late 1980s. Wasserstein has captured something very powerful here, and, like Jane Austen, I wish she could have lived longer and had the chance to write much, much more.
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I've never seen any of Wendy Wasserstein's plays performed live; however, I did see the Meryl Streep/Swoosie Kurtz performance of Uncommon Women on DVD. It's my favorite of her plays, yet The Heidi Chronicles seems to get the most acclaim. I actually like The Heidi Chronicles least of the three plays featured in this book.
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