On and Off Broadway

'The Heidi Chronicles'

Reviewed by Elyse Trevers

Posted

Elisabeth Moss does an excellent job portraying women in conflict. As Peggy Olson in AMC’s Mad Men, she is a woman doing a man’s job in a culture of heavy-drinking womanizers. As Heidi in Wendy Wasserstein’s Pulitzer-Prize winning play The Heidi Chronicles, she again plays a young woman torn between career and family. Moss is passionate, earnest and convincing.

Through four characters, the audience can trace the development of the Baby Boomer generation.The play begins in 1965 when Heidi meets Peter (Bryce Pinkham) at a prep school dance; the play spans 20 years of their friendship. In the next scene, she meets her on-again off-again boyfriend Scoop (a leaden, plodding Jason Biggs) at a McGovern rally. Throughout the play her best friend Susan is constantly reinventing herself and expresses the plight of the women of the time when she says, “By now I’ve been so many people, I don’t know who I am.”

Some of the references that would have once provided the play with charm, now date it, making it challenging for audience member under the age of 55. References made to artist Judy Chicago and record albums by lesser-known groups like Sam the Sham and Nelson and the Rocky Fellers may easily go over their heads.


The play is beautifully written, although some of Heidi’s dialogue is filled with clichés, and Scoop calls her on it when she notes that “all people deserve to fulfill their potential.” The play skillfully uses repetition and lines suggesting history and relationships.

Tracee Chimo is delightful in a series of small but entertaining roles including Fran, the almost-militant lesbian (“You either shave your legs or you don’t.) Pinkham is over-the-top at the beginning but soon tones it down and is comforting. Like Heidi, I kept wishing that he wasn’t gay but instead was madly in love with her.

One wonders how Sheryl Sandberg and other successful career women of her ilk would view Heidi struggling, trying to have it all but having to sacrifice.Yet there would be no successful Sandbergs without the Heidis. They paved the way for the Lean In generation. “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Thanks to Heidi.