Old Money by Wendy Wasserstein


My first reading of Old Money, by Wendy Wasserstein.



From Wendy Wasserstein's Old Money. Photo by Tina Barney.



I read Old Money by Wendy Wasserstein today. Although I have never seen this play, I did see The Heidi Chronicles in New York with Joan Allen,


and I also saw The Sisters Rosensweig.


Frankly, I think this is an interesting but deeply flawed play. It is not clear to me what her message is. The characters with new money are satirized unmercifully - my favorite parts of the play. They want fine things for their status value but have sense of what gives them value. Their children seem to be more interested in hating their parents than enjoying their money, but the third generation - I'm thinking of Ovid and Vivian - seem to have the best balance. They are aware that living the lives they've chosen is really the right path. But its confused - the new money folks are quite happy, but nobody else seems to be. When the play heads off into the future it has a kind of surreal quality that is fun, but the message was pretty unclear, at least to me.
I loved Wendy Wasserstein's play The Heidi Chronicles, and directed it once, but it was much more coherent with a clear message and central character.


Some links to Wendy Wasserstein:
Interview with Susan Domer
Women Writers
Wendy Wasserstein at Amazon
Her agent for lectures
Random House

Some links on Old Money
Bomb Magazine interview
Theatre Mania

Reviews
Richard Connema

Wendy Wasserstein's Old Money is having its west coast premier at TheatreWorks. Ms. Wasserstein began to earn a place as one of our prime American playwrights with The Heidi Chronicles and The Sisters Rosensweig. However, she started losing that title with American Daughter and now with Old Money. The main problem with this play is that, once again, Ms. Wasserstein throws too wide a net in an attempt to show that old monied families were once the nouveau rich in New York. The play becomes frustrating when she covers money, real estate, social mores of high society in the early 1900s, and the social conscience of the rich in the 21st Century all in the space of 2 hours and 15 minutes with intermission. The playwright goes from topic to topic in a disjointed manner and she does not spend enough time to get to the heart of the matter.

John Heilpern
I know the plays of Tom Stoppard, and Wendy Wasserstein, if I may say so, is no Tom Stoppard. The comparison wouldn't normally spring to mind--and it would be an unfair one--were it not for the fact that Ms. Wasserstein's Old Money, her new play about old and new money at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, has borrowed uncomfortably from Arcadia, Mr. Stoppard's best play that was produced with such distinction at Lincoln Center five years ago.

Jacque LeSourd

Wendy Wasserstein had a great idea for a play, but what winds up on stage at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre of Lincoln Center is a disappointing, unfocused mess.

"Old Money," which opened last night, is a terrific title. Set designer Thomas Lynch's setting, a splendid room in a billionaire's restored Manhattan town house, is ripe with possibilities. But this time we find the witty author of "The Sisters Rosensweig" and "The Heidi Chronicles" just spinning her wheels. She doesn't seem to know what she is trying to say, and director Mark Brokaw hasn't helped to clarify her vision.

Posted: Thu - February 19, 2004 at 08:03 PM          

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