{"id":1153,"date":"2026-07-31T11:36:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T11:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1153"},"modified":"2026-07-31T11:36:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T11:36:06","slug":"wendy-wassersteins-prescient-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1153","title":{"rendered":"Wendy Wasserstein\u2019s Prescient Play"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You\u2019re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we\u2019re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up to receive it in your inbox.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Wendy Wasserstein\u2019s \u201cAn American Daughter\u201d<\/strong> (revived, by La Femme Theatre Productions, at the Pershing Square Signature Center, now in previews) harks back to a more hopeful era. The play opened on Broadway in 1997, and it begins in the well-appointed Georgetown home of Lyssa Dent Hughes, a professor of public health and a fifth-generation descendant of Ulysses S. Grant. Her bid to become Surgeon General of the United States is derailed after her husband casually admits during a televised interview that she has never answered a jury summons. Within hours, a neglected civic obligation metastasizes into a national referendum on her privileged upbringing, her marriage, her ambitions, and her fitness for public life. A Beltway spin doctor is brought in to soften her damagingly competent profile, and Lyssa grudgingly consents to a follow-up interview, for which she dons a Hillary Clinton-esque headband: the center will not hold.<\/p>\n

Read more In \u201cTeenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,\u201d Desire and Terror Meet<\/a><\/p>\n

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The play was partly inspired by the failed nominations, in 1993, of Zo\u00eb Baird and Kimba Wood for Attorney General; the candidacies of both women imploded after revelations that they had employed undocumented household workers. With layer-cake wit, Wasserstein transforms the \u201cNannygate\u201d contretemps into a broader meditation on political spectacle and competing visions of feminism. The foil to Lyssa\u2019s second-wave, shoulder-pad feminism is the androgynously named Quincy Quince, a sound-bite-spewing churnalist and third-waver, played by a mini-skirted Elizabeth Marvel in the original Broadway production.<\/p>\n

In a Profile<\/em> of Wasserstein, for this magazine, Nancy Franklin noted that the playwright described \u201cAn American Daughter\u201d as being about \u201cthe sadness of a generation,\u201d referring to her cohort\u2019s failure to live up to its political ideals. Yet \u201cAn American Daughter,\u201d like several of Wasserstein\u2019s other works, is atmospherically closer to a comedy than a tragedy. Yes, Lyssa withdraws her nomination for Surgeon General, her husband betrays her, and her oncologist best friend, Judith, throws herself into the Potomac during a Tashlich service. But that husband, a sometimes cited but perhaps seldom read sociology professor, is more set piece than character, and Judith swims to safety after spotting a floating box of doughnuts and remembering a piquant motto from an old doughnut shop: \u201cAs you ramble on through life, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the donut and not upon the hole.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Just what Wasserstein would have made of Dr. Casey Means, a wellness entrepreneur who has disclosed that she received hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorship and affiliate fees, and who was President Trump\u2019s failed nominee for Surgeon General, is anyone\u2019s guess. But there\u2019s value in looking back. Recent productions such as \u201cSuffs,\u201d \u201cA Woman Among Women,\u201d and, especially, \u201cLiberation,\u201d by the eagle-eyed observer Bess Wohl, have invited audiences to compare the promises and the compromises of successive feminist generations. A revival of \u201cAn American Daughter,\u201d starring Jean Lichty, Robert Sean Leonard, Mary Beth Peil, and Carmen Zilles, offers another such occasion.\u2014Rhoda Feng<\/em><\/p>\n

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About Town<\/h2>\n

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Movies<\/div>\n

Ebrahim Golestan\u2019s drama \u201cBrick and Mirror,\u201d<\/strong> from 1965, widely considered the first feature of the Iranian New Wave, turns a local problem\u2014a Tehran taxi-driver finds an abandoned infant in his back seat\u2014into a teeming panorama of city life. The driver brings the baby to friends partying in a night club; his quandary yields existential debate in a police station, a portrait of a courthouse\u2019s bureaucratic frenzy, and a heartrending documentary vision of an orphanage. These tumultuous incidents are bound by a daring half-hour-long scene of the driver\u2019s erotic overnight reunion with his hard-living girlfriend, who wants to adopt the child. Golestan\u2019s blend of harsh realism and visual imagination is, even now, startling.\u2014Richard Brody (Streaming on Criterion Channel starting Aug. 1.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Dance<\/div>\n

The ballet dancer Misty Copeland\u2019s fight on behalf of Black dancers, who have traditionally been underrepresented in ballet, along with the determination and grace that have characterized her own rise, has arguably transcended the art itself. Now retired from the stage, Copeland moves into the role of mentor and producer. For the Joyce\u2019s two-week Ballet Festival<\/strong>, Copeland brings together dancers including Dance Theatre of Harlem\u2019s Alexandra Hutchinson and the Paris Opera Ballet\u2019s Guillaume Diop (a veritable star). Two programs include a solo from John Taras\u2019s \u201cFirebird,\u201d Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n\u2019s \u201cSonata for Two Cellos,\u201d and a solo by Bob Fosse\u2014a celebration of the diversity of dance itself.\u2014Marina Harss (Joyce Theatre; Aug. 4-16.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more The Outlandish Case Against James Comey<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Art<\/div>\n

\u201cMexican Abstraction: Over a Century of Photography,\u201d<\/strong> the title of an excellent show at Throckmorton, is a bit misleading. The images are mostly still-lifes, landscapes, and nature studies, but they\u2019re never merely representational. If a few of the pictures\u2014Tina Modotti\u2019s telegraph poles, Manuel \u00c1lvarez Bravo\u2019s optician\u2019s sign\u2014have come to define Mexican modernism, the show explores the full range and depth of that style, often with superb vintage prints. Modotti\u2019s famous overhead shot of massed workers, in a soft, hazy sepia print, has an unusually subtle power. Some of the most memorable photographs take us into the uncanny. Graciela Iturbide finds a sky so dark with birds that we can practically hear their calls. Bravo zooms in on a skeletal hand\u2014nightmarish, but oddly exquisite, with a thorny ring.\u2014Vince Aletti (Through Sept. 26.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Off Broadway<\/div>\n

In \u201cThe Saviors,\u201d<\/strong> two altar boys\u2014Paul (Julius Rinzel), grappling with his faith, and Michael (Ivan Howe), with his sexuality\u2014find their friendship unsettled by the arrival of Julian (Stanley Simons), a long-haired drifter who has seemingly freed himself from the constraints of family, church, and ordinary human ties, only to be cornered by his own ruinous desires. The playwright Bubba Weiler, who has spoken of being raised in a \u201cpretty conservative, Catholic atmosphere,\u201d gets at the double consciousness of a Catholic atheist. Paul and Michael could be two sides of the same doubting person, and the setting, a Midwestern Catholic church, is both a crucible of assorted boyhood anxieties and, thanks to the gem\u00fctlich presence of its music director, Judy (Crystal Finn), in many senses a sanctuary.\u2014Rhoda Feng (Atlantic Theatre Company; through Aug. 15.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Hip-Hop<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In 2016, an open-mike bard turned rapper, going simply by Noname<\/strong>, released the mixtape \u201cTelefone,\u201d making good on an early endorsement from a red-hot Chance the Rapper, and the project\u2019s raw but cogent poetry heralded her as hip-hop\u2019s next great theorist. She has since become one of the past decade\u2019s most brilliant lyricists and evenhanded critics, emerging as a social activist and a proponent of pulp and revolutionary Black lit. Her self-released d\u00e9but, \u201cRoom 25,\u201d from 2018, moved from mere rhetorical triumph into finesse and mastery, and its 2023 follow-up, \u201cSundial,\u201d is her magnum opus, as sharp and focussed as it is compositionally rich. For the tenth anniversary of \u201cTelefone,\u201d the rapper returns to the moment when she established that making a name didn\u2019t require having one.\u2014Sheldon Pearce (Sony Hall; Aug. 5.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Movies<\/div>\n

The Georgian filmmaker Otar Iosseliani<\/strong> has long been a North Star for wistful post-Soviet cinephiles. Metrograph\u2019s series \u201cOtar Iosseliani: Fables of Modern Life\u201d will afford New Yorkers a rare opportunity to discover his \u0153uvre of Georgian and French films, meticulously restored in 4K. It is the auteur\u2019s early efforts that truly shine. Iosseliani\u2019s poetic portraits of life on the Soviet periphery range from neorealist documentation of collective farms to playful snapshots of Tbilisi, with a light touch reminiscent of the French New Wave. \u201cThere Once Was a Singing Blackbird\u201d is particularly unmissable: a charismatic young timpanist, taking advantage of a ninety-minute gap between parts mid-performance, leaves his orchestra to run around seducing chic Tbilisi women, wreaking havoc by returning just in time for the finale.\u2014Madeleine Wulfahrt (Aug. 8-16.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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On and Off the Avenue<\/h2>\n

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Rachel Syme on new products promoting gut health.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Like many other women in New York with a smartphone and a shopping problem, I have a thing for shoes, and my Instagram algorithm has adapted accordingly. All day long, my feed serves up a parade of pretty platforms and squishy sandals, beckoning me to part with my savings. I now know (mostly) how to avoid these lures, but a few weeks ago Instagram served me a pair of shoes that I could not manage to look away from\u2014instead, I kept returning to my phone to stare at them, in all their tacky, lurid glory. This has to be some kind of joke, I thought\u2014or maybe an art project? But, no, they were real, and available to buy, for just $69: rubbery beige platform sandals, about ten inches high, that are meant to be worn only during one extremely private activity. They were called, simply, \u201cSh*t Shoes,\u201d from a company named Let Loose<\/strong>, a gut-health brand founded in 2024, by Alexandra Houx Grounds, a willowy blonde who suffered from constant gastric distress and wanted to bring products to market that could address women\u2019s tummy issues with a sense of humor. Grounds\u2019s first offerings were supplements\u2014digestive enzymes, a constipation-relief lemonade mix\u2014but it is the \u201cSh*t Shoes,\u201d essentially a squatty potty split in two and made a bit more fashionable, that has sent the company viral. The first batch has already sold out, thanks, at least in part, to TikTok enthusiasts; now they are available only via pre-order. The shoes may be a gimmick, but they are part of a larger trend, in which people are openly talking about (and buying things to augment) their intestinal microbiomes. Synbiotics, fibre bars, colostrum powder, the new best-selling book \u201cYou\u2019ve Been Pooping All Wrong,\u201d by Trischa Pasricha\u2014and, now, poop shoes. There\u2019s never been a better time to trust your gut.<\/p>\n

Read more How to Survive an Infestation of Toxic Caterpillars<\/a><\/p>\n

P.S. Good stuff on the internet:<\/strong><\/p>\n