SOURCE: Davy, Kate. Review of The Heidi Chronicles, by Wendy Wasserstein. Theatre Journal 42, no. 1 (March 1990): 107-08.

In the following review, Davy assesses the critical and commercial success of The Heidi Chronicles within the context of contemporary feminist concerns.

The Heidi Chronicles is a rare play for Broadway. Written by a woman, its central character is an unmarried professional woman. It won the Pulitzer, Tony, N.Y. Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Hull-Warriner, and Susan Smith Blackburn awards. Ostensibly a triumph for women, Heidi is instead a problematic example of how the male-dominated production system of commercial theater maintains its control over women, in this case with the complicity of a woman playwright.

Heidi follows a single woman through three decades, from high school in the 1960s and feminist activities in the 1970s to a career as an art historian who rediscovers “lost” women painters and...