I got a chance to see the newest offering by wendy wasserstein last week. Kol Nidre is hte best time to see the hardest ticket shows in NYC. Thanksgiving weekend, fridays in summertime,superbowl sunday and jewish new year.
i went to Lincoln center to see another Production that they put on. Dianne Wiest plays a college professor at an IVY league New England School. She is teaching Shakespeare from a feminist perspective and speaks some of Wasserstein's best and witty lines. The college professor meets a Midwest wrestler who went to Groton, who refers to himself as Third. As he is one. This young man challenges her sense of balance, even though he doesnt do anything directly. Except write a midterm. His midterm is on Lear and she questions whether he wrote it or plagerized it. She confronts him and he reports he is the author. She takes him up on charges and loses.
he believes she is discriminating against him because he is a jock and her steroetype that he is a rich kid from a private school who plays sports cant possibly write a publishable paper on LEAR.
THird is not wealthy, his grandfather was and he is a wrestler and challenges the establishment in his vegan, bisexual, global issue, protesting college campus. he is white boy from the midwest that takes all the Transgendered, gender bending courses
to expand his horizons and for the love of learning. he works his way through school and eventually transfers to Ohio State.
THere are other plots. Her struggles with her daughter, her absent non accomplished professor husband. Her references to her Lesbian daughter who lives in Vermont making organic cheese with her rhodes scholar, fullbright partner ( who cheats on her). the tension with her family is around her father, Played brilliantly by charles durning who has alsheimers and her daughter who wants to leave swarthmore and run off with a bankteller from trenton.
then there is her peer professor played by Amy Acquino. i am not sure why this character is there. her cancer comes out of remission and after the Main character, calls her doctor to control her treatment, they part ways. they are reunited at the end of the play.
this is an overcomplicated play that tried to do too much. There are too many conflicts, too many topics. The main character is addicted to watching CNN and cursing out the current administration. Though it makes for some good lines, it will date the play and the whole scene is needless. There are other scenes that dont move the play forward.
the tension builds like a Mamet play in the first act and really tried to do too much.
I love wendy wasserstein but this play does quite meet her usual standards. AR Gurney was in the audience the night i was there and my seatmate and i wonder HOW different authors would handle the same characters and topics.
i wanted to love this wasserstein but liked it well enough....but couldnt like the main character.
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from Playbill
Third is a full-length expansion of a one-act that had its premiere at Theatre J in Washington, DC, in early 2004. At the time, it was paired with another one act, Welcome to My Rash. In the one-act version of Third, Laurie Jameson, a veteran professor at a private liberal arts college, and Woodson Bull III (as in "the Third"), her conservative, wrestling-jock of a student, face off in a series of confrontations over politics, Shakespeare, and campus culture. Meanwhile, Laurie fends off hot flashes as well a challenging relationship with her college-age daughter.
