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The three other Wasserstein children are such paragons of conventional success they could almost be lifted out of a Judith Krantz novel. The eldest sister, Sandra Meyer, one of the first generation of pioneering executive women, is a senior corporate officer for Citicorp. The other sister, Georgette Levis, married a psychiatrist and lives in Vermont, where she owns a country inn. Growing up in affluent surroundings on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Wendy was closest to her brother Bruce, three years her senior. A path-forging mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer, he is a co-founder of the investment-banking house Wasserstein Perella & Co., which the Wall Street Journal dubbed "the world's hottest dealmakers."*
From Wendy's perspective, Bruce and her sisters give a new meaning to the concept of sibling rivalry. "On a certain level," she says, "I'm not a very competitive person, so I find my own way." Laughing merrily, she adds, "Would you like to throw your hat in the ring with Bruce and Sandy? Wouldn't you go to drama school too?"
In fact, the decision to enroll in the Yale University School of Drama in 1973 was a turning point in her life. After graduating from Mount Holyoke, Wendy was somewhat at loose ends and living at home in New York. She narrowed her career options to this odd academic choice: business school at Columbia University or drama school. Needless to say, her parents were vocal proponents of business school. "But finally," she recounts, "I decided to take a chance and go to drama school, since you should do what you want to do in life."
Even now Wendy remains fascinated by the way she and her brother have come to represent almost twin poles of the age-old dialectic between art and money. Wendy delights in telling the story of how during the off-Broadway previews of Heidi, she was locked in an intense artistic discussion with Joan Allen when she was handed a message: "Your brother Bruce called. Can't come to the play tonight. Is buying Nabisco." In an essay for New York Woman titled "Big Brother at Forty," Wendy writes wistfully, "We travel in very different worlds, and in some ways we've become enigmas to each other." For his part, Bruce says, "Compared to most sibling relations, we're relatively close." Virtually the only wall decorations in his office are three posters for Isn't It Romantic.
Early in Heidi, the heroine says in exasperation over male self-confidence, "I was wondering what mothers teach their sons that they never bother to tell their daughters." The playwright is inordinately fond of that line, since it springs directly from her own family experience. "God knows," she exclaims, "I'm not going out to merge Nabisco. I stay in my house and write plays." But judging from Wendy Wasserstein's triumph in writing what may be the best play about her generation, there is much to be said for what mothers teach their daughters.
FOOTNOTE: *Wasserstein Perella was one of Time Inc.'s investment bankers for its recently proposed merger with Warner Communications Inc.