Moments shared made my heart ache. Beautiful.

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.

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.

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

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.

Here we are twenty years later, still trying to figure out if we can "have it all..."

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.

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.

Good plays

It's a little mad with nostalgia.

I've had these plays on my shelf for a long time now but I never picked them up. I do think that it was for the best, since the place where I am in my life more closely resembles those of the characters in these plays. I do think that how I felt about these plays was strongly influenced by the place I am in my life.

Uncommon Women and Others - four stars

Isn't It Romantic - five stars

The Heidi Chronicles - three stars

Overall, I really love Wasserstein's snappy writing style and witty dialogue are the biggest strengths of the plays. Something else I enjoyed is that Wasserstein is able to write characters that I find revolting (especially in Isn't It Romantic, all of the supporting characters made me nauseated by how much I hated them, but I could still read the play without getting overly disgusted). The only play that really missed the mark for me was actually The Heidi Chronicles, despite it being the Pulitzer Prize winner. There were bits I enjoyed (especially the first couple of scenes) but the rest didn't resonate with me as strongly as Uncommon Women and Others or Isn't It Romantic.

I read The Heidi Chronicles to fulfill the "play" category of 2015 Ultimate Reading Challenge.

I don't know. I feel like I just didn't get it. The witty one liners were witty to be sure, but it was clear the characters meant something other than what they were saying, and I just didn't know them well enough to read between the lines. I just about never read plays, so maybe I just don't know how?