The ’90s were a rough time for women in politics. During Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton famously sparked a public outcry for defending her choice to pursue legal work when many political spouses “stayed home and baked cookies and had teas.” She was soon forced to backpedal and release her own chocolate chip cookie (which won in a face-off with Barbara Bush’s oatmeal-infused version in a Family Circle contest ahead of the election).
Wendy Wasserstein tried to capture the contradictions of that era in her 1997 drama An American Daughter, a seriously flawed show that is now getting an equally flawed revival at Pershing Square Signature Center. The story centers on an accomplished physician (Jean Lichty) whose nomination for surgeon general goes awry under charges of elitism that no man of her level of achievement would face. Lichty’s Dr. Lyssa Dent Hughes is a liberal do-gooder who’s ridiculously well-connected: a descendant of Ulysses S. Grant, the daughter of a conservative Republican senator from Indiana (Dakin Matthews, a wonderful glad-hander who seems far too Southern for the role), and the former college roommate of the Democratic first lady. (They attended Bryn Mawr, not Hillary Clinton’s actual alma mater, Wellesley.)
But the good doctor’s pursuit of her dream job is undone by two accusations that seem almost quaint in the post-’90s news cycle: failing to answer a jury duty summons (she says she misplaced the form) and dismissing stay-at-home moms like her late mother and their concern for icebox cakes rather than bigger issues like women’s health that have become her life’s work. The parallels to Hillary Clinton’s “baking cookies” fiasco are obvious, even before Lyssa ditches her pant suits for a smart skirted suit and a Hillary-style headband in a crucial TV interview that will determine the viability of her nomination. (Curiously, the production has no credited costume designer.)
Wasserstein’s opening scenes of exposition are clunky, made clunkier by the introduction of a quorum of secondary characters saddled with ridiculous names that are better suited to the faculty room at Hogwarts or some other kid-lit saga. Timber Tucker (Chris Ghaffari) is a TV interviewer who asks sharp questions but improbably shares his private number with Lyssa because he really wants to help. Morrow McCarthy (Ryan Spahn, oozing glib insincerity) is a gay Catholic Republican columnist clearly modeled on a young Andrew Sullivan but wholly unconvincing as a character who would be a perpetual visitor to the Georgetown home of Lyssa and her poli-sci professor husband, Walter (Robert Sean Leonard). (Where would they even have met this 30-year-old acid-tongued striver?)
And then there’s the utterly absurd Quincy Quince (Carmen Zilles), a bomber jacket-sporting wunderkind feminist author and former student of Walter’s who lets herself into his home, tries to seduce him while Lyssa and others are in the next room, and then makes a play for Timber’s job when she lands some TV commentating gigs. (She seems to be a version of Naomi Wolf, whose 1990 bestseller The Beauty Myth argued that unrealistic fashion and beauty standards continue to hold women back from societal advancement.)
These characters are not broad or funny enough to work as satire, nor are they grounded enough to support the mechanics of Wasserstein’s rushed plot. And I haven’t even mentioned Senator Dent’s newlywed fourth wife (the divine Mary Beth Peil), who eagerly embraces the nickname “Chubby” because, as she explains, “I never was. So it’s all just amusing.” Or Judith Kaufman (Montego Glover), Lyssa’s best friend since boarding school who fills multiple DEI slots all at once: She’s a Black Jewish physician who longs for marriage and motherhood but can’t seem to find a suitable partner since divorcing a man who turned out to be gay. (As Morrow tells her with characteristic snappishness, “Your nonpracticing heterosexuality is putting a definite cramp in your joie de vivre.”) Judith is a fascinating character, as full of contradictions as Lyssa in Glover’s clear-eyed performance, but she seems to have wandered in from an entirely different (and more compelling) show.
Wasserstein whips up some individual moments of insight and wit — particularly Lyssa’s rousing condemnation of the double standard that women of accomplishment face, to be perfect but also not too perfect lest they seem condescending. But she surrounds those moments with a lot of implausible nonsense, the play’s shortcomings sadly exacerbated by Sarna Lapine’s misguided direction. Why sit Lyssa and Judith back to back for their big heart-to-heart talk, and lower the lights on Mikiko Suzuki Macadams’ stylish Georgetown living-room set as if they were in some stylized TV show?
Lichty, whose La Femme Theatrical Productions produced this revival, also seems miscast as Lyssa, flat of voice and off-puttingly strident in defense of her own competence. The drama might work if the character builds to her final outburst but Lichty seems to have a chip on her shoulder from the beginning, upset rather than befuddled that anyone would misconstrue her good intentions. Like frosted tips and dial-up internet, An American Daughter emerges as another relic of the ’90s best consigned to that bygone era. ★☆☆☆☆
AN AMERICAN DAUGHTER
Pershing Square Signature Center, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through Sept. 20 for $59 to $149