Off-B'way Reviews: An American Daughter; Disruption

Dakin Matthews and Mary Beth Peil in
An American Daughter.
Credit: Joan Marcus

Two Broadway veterans and incisive character actors, Dakin Matthews and Mary Beth Peil, deliver fascinating and detailed performances as a conservative Republican senator and his fourth wife, a seemingly flighty but actually canny socialite, in La Femme Theater Productions’ revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s 1997 play An American Daughter at the Pershing Square Signature Center. The trouble is these two wonderful actors are playing supporting characters and are not the center of the play. That role is Lyssa Dent Hughes, the senator’s daughter and nominee for Surgeon General whose appointment is in trouble. Lyssa is played by Jean Lichty, the executive producer of La Femme, who also starred in the company’s previous Off-Broadway revivals including Night of the Iguana and A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur. You have to admire Lichty for mounting a gorgeous production of a rarely-done play (Sarna Lapine smoothly directs and Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams designed the handsome Georgetown living room set). She wisely surrounds herself with a cast of Tony winners and nominees, but she lacks the acting heft to carry Daughter’s dramatic weight.

Montego Glover and Jean Lichty in
An American Daughter.
Credit: Joan Marcus

Wasserstein wrote the play in response to President Bill Clinton’s controversial appointments of two successive women for Attorney General, both of whom were lambasted and eventually withdrew because they did not pay Social Security taxes on wages for their nannies. Wasserstein used the incident to examine how women in public life were judged by unfair standards never applied to their male counterparts. Clinton’s wife Hillary would later find herself in similar sexist traps during her 2016 Presidential campaign. In Wasserstein’s fictional treatment, her candidate is a highly qualified doctor and descendent of President Ulysses S. Grant, tripped up by blowing off a jury summons and criticizing her mother for being a housewife. Wasserstein exhibited her customary wit and generated keen observations on women’s struggles to balance personal and political issues. It’s an entertaining and insightful work, but Daughter received mixed reviews and had a limited run of 89 performances.