‘The Heidi Chronicles’ frozen in time

POWERFUL BUT DATED ‘HEIDI CHRONICLES’: (left to right) Tracee Chimo, Jason Biggs, Elisabeth Moss & Bryce Pinkham in the revival of the Wendy Wasserstein classic. Photo: Joan Marcus

THE HEIDI CHRONICLES
By Wendy Wasserstein
Directed by Pam MacKinnon
The Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th Street
(877-486-3037),www.theheidichroniclesonbroadway.com

By David NouNou

Before Heidi there was “Maude,”and shortly after Heidi came “Murphy Brown,” all of them feminists, enterprising, uncompromising women, and unfortunately, all define a particular decade. “Maude” made a statement for women’s lib in the 1970s, “Murphy” advanced career women in the 1990s, but poor Heidi, she is stuck in the 1980s and really doesn’t stand for very much. She is a follower, not a leader. She is extremely well educated, bandies about the different prestigious colleges she attended or taught, an art historian, campaigned for women artists, and for all the women’s movements and activism she championed, she ultimately is defined through the eyes of the two men she met very early on in her life.

Heidi first met Peter Patrone in 1965 at her high school dance. He is charmingly caustic, clever, shy, endearing certainly (as portrayed by Bryce Pinkham). By the late 1980s, he is New York City’s foremost pediatrician. This relationship, although lifelong, is never an option for Heidi, for Peter to no one’s surprise but Heidi’s is gay.

The second man in her life is Scoop Rosenbaum. They met in 1968 at a McCarthy for president rally in New Hampshire. Scoop is arrogant, pushy in a likeable way (or maybe it is just because Jason Biggs is so likeable) and a successful editor of a magazine. Like Heidi, he is headstrong and not a good match. He ultimately marries a malleable woman who makes no ripples for him nor challenges him; this is not Heidi. They shall forever be the love of each other’s lives and the one that should have been but wasn’t meant to be.

Heidi’s life crisscrosses with these two men until the plays end in 1989. Throughout her many movements, many women enter in and out of her life, and all of them seem to move on successfully or not, except for Heidi. She glows when she lectures about female artists and their place in art history, but where is Heidi? Nothing ever seems to fulfill her or make her happy. Does she want too much? Does she want everything, but thinks she can’t attain it? These were heady questions for women up to 1989.

Unfortunately for The Heidi Chronicles, it is a play that is steeped and confined in its time frame and era. Hampered by the songs of each decade it represents, images of Geraldine Ferraro, pictures of women’s lib, with banners as backdrops, all add to the datedness of the play. Unlike Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Glass Menagerie, or Death of a Salesman, all of which are timeless and can be revived every few years by a visionary director that gives them a new slant, this play is so structured and confined that its parameters are limited. Of course, women’s rights are still relevant today, but Wendy Wasserstein took it only up to 1989 and a lot has happened for women since then—a lot of it good and some not so good: Sarah Palin for vice president, not so good. Hillary Clinton as the next president of the U.S.? Now that would be progress and who says women can’t have it all?

Okay, back to the play and cast; both Jason Biggs as Scoop and Bryce Pinkham as Peter shine in the play. They enliven the stage and are charismatic in their parts. A standout among the women is Tracee Chimo in multiple parts. Which brings us to Heidi and Elisabeth Moss; Heidi is not a very likeable person; she seems to be her own worst enemy. She participates in a lot of things but nothing makes her happy. Most of the major characters develop and grow, but Heidi seems to revel in her unhappiness. As portrayed by Ms. Moss, hardly anything changes through the decades, not even her hairdo. Ms. Moss, an accomplished, multi Emmy-nominated television actress (most notably in “Mad Men”) is not comfortable on the stage, thus making Heidi less interesting than even the minor characters in the play.

Although The Heidi Chronicles won the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama in 1989 and was revolutionary for its day, with Heidi even going so far as striking a chord by the end by becoming both a single mom and a career woman. As a revival, it all seems old hat; been there done that already.

NOT MEANT TO BE: Elisabeth Moss & Jason Biggs as former lovers Heidi & Scoop in ‘The Heidi Chronicles’. Photo: Joan Marcus

GIRL POWER: Ali Ahn, Leighton Bryan & Elise Kibler in ‘The Heidi Chronicles.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

HAVING IT ALL? Elisabeth Moss in ‘The Heidi Chronicles.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published March 26, 2015
Reviewed at press performance on March 25, 2015