Elisabeth Moss brings 'Heidi' back to Broadway
NEW YORK — Can women truly have it all — and how do we define what that means? In 1989, Wendy Wasserstein tackled those questions with The Heidi Chronicles, which follows an art historian over more than two decades as she struggles to find fulfillment in her career and personal life.
Pam MacKinnon, who is directing the first Broadway revival of the play, observes wryly, "I wish it were strikingly dated."
Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss, her leading lady, agrees. "It's very difficult to be a human being, let alone a woman, and not identify with Heidi."
Moss and MacKinnon — a 2013 Tony Award winner for her searing revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — are discussing the new production backstage at the Music Box Theatre, where it's now in previews for an opening March 19.
Moss, who hadn't seen the play before signing on but had "read it years ago," says of coming back to it: "It came to light how funny it is ... and also terribly sad."
The actress, 32, had a couple of girlfriends her age come to see the production recently, and "we all just sat around and talked about it — for an hour." Their takeaway? That "things haven't changed that much."
In some respects, of course, they have. When a prominent character in the play reveals he is gay — in the first act, in a scene set in the '70s — even the forward-thinking Heidi is taken aback.
MacKinnon, 47, recalls that she was "the oldest person in the rehearsal hall" when the company first staged the scene, "and it was sort of like, 'OK, we have to roll back our present notions.' A gay man coming out to his very close female friend in 1974 was a different beast than it would be today — even in a large metropolitan setting, it would have been."
Later in Heidi, a single woman adopts a child — "something that is well within the realm of the possible today," MacKinnon points out. "But in 1989, it was still sort of, 'How does she do that?' "
Moss agrees: "People are more used to people making all kinds of different choices now."
Heidi trails Heidi and her crew — the ambitious, self-centered love interest, Scoop; the tenderhearted but acerbic confidante, Peter; the ever-evolving, striving high-school pal, Susan — through different "political epochs," MacKinnon says. But just as important, "it's a play about friends, and you can hook in in many different ways."
The ensemble, which includes Jason Biggs (Orange Is the New Black, American Pie) as Scoop and Bryce Pinkham (A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder) as Peter, "has already bonded," MacKinnon says. "There is something about the play that sort of demands that ... and they really have signed up for it, and it's delightful to watch."
MacKinnon had the chance to meet Wasserstein, who died in 2006 of lymphoma, once, during the 1997 premiere of the playwright's An American Daughter.
"She writes really funny scenes, and sort of lulls the reader and audience into thinking, 'This will be easy,' " MacKinnon says. "But then she drops you into this lonely, isolating place, where you think, 'These poor little people — they're so smart, but they're still caught.' That's my favorite kind of storytelling."
Moss notes, "We've had a lot of young women, twentysomethings, who have really connected to the play and are so excited about this great writer, Wendy, and feel empowered."