Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wasserstein, Wendy (Vol. 183) - Kate Davy (review date March 1990)
Wasserstein, Wendy (Vol. 183) - Kate Davy (review date March 1990)
Kate Davy (review date March 1990)
SOURCE: Davy, Kate. Review of The Heidi Chronicles, by Wendy Wasserstein. Theatre Journal 42, no. 1 (March 1990): 107-08.
[In the following review, Davy assesses the critical and commercial success of The Heidi Chronicles within the context of contemporary feminist concerns.]
The Heidi Chronicles is a rare play for Broadway. Written by a woman, its central character is an unmarried professional woman. It won the Pulitzer, Tony, N.Y. Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Hull-Warriner, and Susan Smith Blackburn awards. Ostensibly a triumph for women, Heidi is instead a problematic example of how the male-dominated production system of commercial theater maintains its control over women, in this case with the complicity of a woman playwright.
Heidi follows a single woman through three decades, from high school in the 1960s and feminist activities...
[The entire page is 1144 words long]
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- Introduction
- Principal Works
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Criticism
- Wendy Wasserstein and Esther Cohen (interview date August 1987)
- Gerald Weales (review date 5 May 1989)
- Joanne Kirschner (review date 1990)
- Kate Davy (review date March 1990)
- Helene Keyssar (essay date March 1991)
- Wendy Wasserstein and The Playwright's Art (interview date 9 October 1991)
- Alex Raksin (review date 30 May 1993)
- Sheridan Morley (review date 20 August 1994)
- Stefan Kanfer (review date 7 November 1994)
- Richard Donahue (essay date 22 April 1996)
- Ilene Cooper (review date 1 June 1996)
- Stefan Kanfer (review date 7 April 1997)
- Claudia Barnett (review date December 1997)
- Stephen J. Whitfield (essay date 1997)
- Jan Balakian (essay date 1999)
- David Shengold (review date March 2000)
- Publishers Weekly (review date 23 April 2001)
- Miriam M. Chirico (essay date 2001)
- Further Reading
- Copyright
