Monday, April 17, 2006

Uncommon Women


I finally watched Wendy Wasserstein's first play, Uncommon Women. PBS televised it and you can rent it on Netflix .

Even though some of it is so dated I cringed (college songs of marrying a Yalie, for example), the play, which is set in 1977 and opens on an informal reunion of friends from Mt. Holyoke with scenes from their college days that cover discussion of orgasms and menstrual blood, lays the way for Sex and the City three decades later. "We were natural resources to each other before we were tapped," says one friend to another.

It's innocent and groundbreaking all at once, and also a little bit heartbreaking as one of the characters promises, "At 45, we'll be incredible!" At 45, Wendy Wasserstein was incredible. At 55, she was dead. But her sympathetic, funny, feminist characters live on.

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