When Wendy Wasserstein’s play The Sisters Rosensweig first opened on Broadway in 1993 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, it was well before HBO had a show called Sex and the City. You might find some parallels between the two as Wasserstein’s play is about three sisters who get together for one of the sister’s 54th birthday. Over the course of the play they share stories about men, relationships and the eternal search for acceptance and self-fulfillment. You can see the similarities in South Coast Rep‘s new production of the vastly superior The Sisters Rosensweig that just opened and runs through June 2nd.
The cast at SCR includes Amy Aquino, Matthew Arkin, Betsy Brandt, Bill Brochtrup, Emily James, Riley Neldam, Eleanor Reissa and Julian Stone. The production is directed by Casey Stangl.
Wasserstein, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Heidi Chronicles, passed away in 2006 at the age of 55 due to complications from lymphoma. But her work lives on and this is a truly great play worth seeing.
In an interview with The Paris Review in 1997, Wasserstein said of this play:
“When I see the play, I feel I’m seeing a Broadway play in 1958, or what I wish those plays had been. I remember going to them and thinking, I really like this but where are the girls? The Sisters Rosensweig is like those plays—the curtain goes up and there’s one set, and the play is well-made, you know, beginning, middle, and end. It takes place over a weekend, the stars get applause, the stars get exit applause, they each tell their stories, it arcs in the second act, all of that. It was much harder to write than any of my other plays.”
Wendy Wasserstein photo courtesy of The Paris Review.
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