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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 of this mythical audience: "What happened to her? Where's the chicken?"
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 it to Broadway.
It was not 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.' "
Initially, at least, Marcuse has found a niche on Broadway, with Heidi playing to houses roughly 90% full. Many of the reviews have been a press agent's dream. The New York Daily News's critic hailed Heidi's recent arrival on Broadway with this pronouncement: "I doubt we'll see a better play this season." The other New 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."
The playwright does not deny that bad reviews wound. But these days, there is also a keen pride as Wasserstein views her handiwork on Broadway. "I'm normally a self-deprecating person," she says, putting it mildly. "But when I saw those women on stage in the feminist rap group, I said, 'Good for them, and good for us.' This is a play of ideas. Whether you agree or not doesn't matter."