Wendy Wasserstein has died. Wasserstein was probably best known for her play Uncommon Women…and Others, a PBS version of which, starring Swoozie Kurtz, Meryl Streep, and others, used to play in virtual perpetuity on TV.
I saw the brilliant The Heidi Chronicles with my mom on Broadway (it was her birthday gift to me). I cried at the scene where Heidi complains about feminism being swallowed up by the next generation’s indifference. A few years later, also for my birthday, mom and I saw The Sisters Rosensweig, and we joked that we’d do this every year that a new Wasserstein play was out. Now I guess we won’t anymore.
Wasserstein wrote with humor and insight about feminism, and she had a unique voice about what we now call “Will and Grace” relationships; about the connections between straight women and gay men (she also wrote the screenplay for The Object of My Affection).
She made my life richer. Funnier. Smarter. I’m sad she’s gone. May she be born again among us.
