[In the following negative review, Kanfer examines the characters and plot of An American Daughter, pronouncing the play's central conceit as “false.”]

Given the headlines, it becomes increasingly difficult to view Hillary Rodham Clinton as a dupe. Unless, of course, you live in Barbra Streisand's part of Hollywood, where the First Lady has become a classic feminist icon: Woman as Victim. Or you happen to stop by the Cort Theater, where Wendy Wasserstein's An American Daughter is being performed.

The story begins merrily enough in the opulent, ultra-civilized Georgetown home of the Abrahmsons. The President has just nominated the lady of the house, Dr. Lyssa Dent Hughes (Kate Nelligan), for the post of Surgeon General. Should Congress approve—and she looks like a shoo-in—the appointment will cap a remarkable career. A lineal descendant of General Ulysses Grant and the daughter of Senator Alan Hughes (Hal Holbrook), Lyssa has been married to the same loving guy for many years, is the mother of bright and eager twins, lives in the best part of Washington, has done important work investigating and curing women's diseases, and recently headed a prominent hospital. Even though Time named her as one of the country's 50 most influential women, she is a truly distinguished individual.

What's wrong with this picture? Well for one thing, Lyssa's husband, sociology professor Walter Abrahmson (Peter Riegert), has been feeling irrelevant lately. No one talks about his achievements; then again, he hasn't published anything significant for a long time. As Walter jogs downhill toward a midlife crisis, who should appear but his former student, the comely Quincy Quince (Elizabeth Marvel)? Now a journalist, she has dropped by to grill the candidate, and to display a sinuous young body to the prof. For another thing, Lyssa's best friend, Dr. Judith B. Kaufman (Lynne Thigpen), is a carrier of depression, infecting everyone who listens to her. An African-American convert to Judaism, the divorcée complains about the “shvartzas” roaming around Washington, bitches about the clock refusing to stand still for her (masochistically, she listens to the “I-can't-believe-I'm-middle-aged-and-the-culture-isn't-about-me-anymore” rock station), and wails that now, in her 40s, she finds it impossible to conceive a child by laboratory methods.

But this is only the beginning. Onto the scene comes major trouble in the person of TV reporter Timber Tucker (Cotter Smith). During his routine interview with Lyssa, another friend of the family stops by. He is the fractious gay conservative Morrow McCarthy (Bruce Norris), and in the course of the afternoon he lets slip a lethal secret. Some years back Lyssa was served with a notice for jury duty. She lost the paper—either accidentally or deliberately—and never showed up in court. On camera that evening Tucker tells the world that the prospective Surgeon General, sworn to uphold the law of the land, flouted it by ignoring her civic duty. Is this the sort of person we want in the Cabinet?

Predictably, all hell breaks loose along the Potomac. Lyssa only compounds the problem by playing down her privileged background, speaking of her late mother as the kind of simple midwestern homebody whose idea of service was making icebox cakes. This is regarded as a put-down by every female in flyover country, and pretty soon the doctor's approval ratings look like something that Socks dragged in. (Catching her off guard at a local grocery, the New York Post heads its story, “DOCTOR ICEBOX” SHOPS.) Overnight this blissful home is turned into Heartbreak House, where a marriage and an appointment are in danger of their lives.

To rescue both, Lyssa agrees to one final interview. She begins politely, the smile sweet, the coiffure as carefully arranged as the bowl of flowers on the coffee table. But Lyssa cannot stop articulating her party line: The country needs a feminist as Surgeon General—A disproportionate amount is being spent on prostate cancer research, and nowhere near enough on breast and uterine cancer. As she heats up, passion overwhelms discretion and her situation deteriorates before our eyes. If the contrite Walter is ultimately able to keep Lyssa, the spineless President is not.

Wasserstein knows how to tell a joke, as she amply demonstrated in The Heidi Chronicles and The Sisters Rosensweig. What she has never been able to do (pace the Pulitzer Prize committee who gave Heidi its Theater Prize) is write a play without a sitcom soul. An American Daughter contains plenty of wry remarks and a few characters with resonance. The others are about as convincing as the seconding speeches at a political convention. In addition, the playwright has seen fit to put in little references to her friends—thus Charlie Rose's name is heavily dropped, the voices of Michael Kinsley and Susan Stamberg are used to announce several news items, and—in the unkindest cut of all—Timber Tucker is meant to be a reference to Forrest Sawyer, the ABC anchor.

Wasserstein has let it be known that the play was inspired by the “Nannygate” cases of Zoë Baird and Kimba Wood. Maybe. But the lady in the title role is made up and tricked out as a ringer for the First Lady, complete with blonde tresses and a variety of discreet power outfits. With a few exceptions—the estimable Nelligan; Thigpen, who has the timing of a Philharmonic musician; and Smith, who seems believable when he says, “I never unwind”—the cast consists of animated cartoons (Marvel flounces like an elongated Betty Boop, and as a spin doctor Peter Benson is Casper the Friendly Ghost in Permapress). Or props with legs: Reigert is flaccid in a flaccid part, Norris is bitchy without being funny (that the reptilian Morrow could be Lyssa's intimate says volumes about the woman's discernment), and Hal Holbrook has Senatorial hair without Senatorial authority.

But a sharper ensemble would have made little difference. Daniel Sullivan's crisp direction and the best efforts of set designer John Lee Beatty and costumier Jane Greenwood cannot hide an essential fact: Wasserstein has little to say, and that little is false. The notion that a strong woman cannot survive in the male-dominated corridors of power is given the lie every day by Madeleine Albright and Janet Reno. As for the playwright's brand of feminism, it is at all times synonymous with self-indulgence. I find nothing enchanting about single motherhood, for example, and the failure of Dr. Kaufman's plan to get herself impregnated by syringe should be applauded, not lamented. According to press reports, Wasserstein has good news. “The next thing I want to write,” she says, “is a romantic farce.” Splendid; just as long as it doesn't take place inside the Beltway, where many noble ambitions have come a cropper—political, journalistic, and now, theatrical.