NEW YORK—Playwright Wendy Wasserstein covers a lot of bases in her moving and entertaining “The Heidi Chronicles,” now being presented in its first Broadway revival since its 1989 triple win for Best Play: Pulitzer Prize, Tony, and New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards.
Heidi and friends, both male and female, are portrayed against the changing social and political backdrop from the ‘60s through the late ’80s. With humor and poignancy mixing alternately or simultaneously, the sometimes puzzled but never daunted Heidi endeavors to sort out her beliefs and goals.
Wasserstein, representing Heidi as an art historian, cleverly educates the viewer along the way with projections (design by Peter Nigrini) and discussions of major female artists of days, sometimes centuries, long past.
Heidi (winningly played by Elisabeth Moss), and two off-again, on-again suitors, Scoop Rosenbaum (Jason Biggs) and Peter Patrone (Bryce Pinkham), are entwined with Heidi over the years, though not always in a positive way.
When Heidi and Scoop first meet at a dance touting Eugene McCarthy for President (“neat and clean for Eugene”), their encounter smacks more of a debate than a possible courtship. In spite of the two-way attraction, Scoop, a newspaper publisher and lawyer, is apparently threatened by a woman with intelligence in sync with his own.
