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Off-Broadway Play Review—Revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s “An American Daughter”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 14 September 2026 16:35
- Written by Kevin Filipski
An American Daughter
Written by Wendy Wasserstein
Directed by Sarna Lapine
Performances through September 20, 2026
Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
lafemmetheatreproductions.org
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| Dakin Matthews, Jean Lichty, and Robert Sean Leonard in An American Daughter (photo by Joan Marcus) |
An American Daughter opened on Broadway in 1997, a few years after President Clinton’s picks for attorney general, Zoë Baird and Kimba Wood, were withdrawn from nomination over the ridiculous Nannygate scandals. The current revival (its first) shows that, in today’s climate—where Trump has destroyed norms that have obtained for decades—it now seems irrelevant and surprisingly one-dimensional.
Wasserstein’s heroine, the accomplished liberal doctor Lyssa Edna Hughes, is in her mid-40s and has been nominated as surgeon general. She’s seen as a safe pick, and she has a solid political pedigree, since her father, Alan Hughes, is a longtime Republican senator who has just married his fourth wife, nicknamed Chubby. Lyssa’s husband Walter is an academic still respected in progressive circles.
Several other characters flit in and out. Lyssa’s college friend Judith is a Black Jewish oncologist from Brooklyn desperate to have a baby. Morrow McCarthy, a gay, anti-abortion columnist, is another friend of the couple. Then there’s Quincy Quince, a Gen X feminist whose mentor was Walter and whose quick rise to fame threatens to derail Alyssa and Walter’s own relationship.
It’s all melodramatically soapy, especially when rising TV journalist Timber Tucker—during an interview with Alyssa—runs with a tidbit he overhears at a brunch attended by all the characters that the supposedly perfect Lyssa ignored a jury summons, which begins a runaway train that destroys Lyssa’s nomination.
Although the inspired and insightful creator of The Heidi Chronicles and The Sisters Rosensweig is still occasionally present, these characters are not differentiated enough—with names like Chubby, Morrow, Timber and Quincy, one suspects Wasserstein knew this too and hoped the monikers would make them stand out—to be worth spending 2-1/2 hours with, and the surfeit of one-liners (this being Wasserstein, there are many of them, some of them hilarious, others not so) tries to hide the lack of motivation and development.
On Broadway 30 years ago, Daniel Sullivan’s slick production and Kate Nelligan’s elegant Lyssa helped smooth over the dramaturgical holes. But the new off-Broadway staging—unevenly directed by Sarna Lapine on Mikiko Suzuki Macadams’ beautifully appointed set of Lyssa and Walter’s Georgetown home—is hampered by slack writing and a mixed bag of acting.
Montego Glover is an adroit Judith, Dakin Matthews has a blast as Alan and Robert Sean Leonard is a capable Walter. On the debit side, Mary Beth Peil (Chubby), Carmen Zilles (Quincy), Ryan Spahn (Morrow) and Chris Gaffhari (Timber) can’t transcend their clever names enough to become individuals, while, most damagingly, Jean Lichty plays Lyssa with an unfortunate somnolence that makes Wasserstein’s heroine disappear into the scenery.
September '26 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 10 September 2026 21:04
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Streaming Releases of the Week
Sherman’s March
(Music Box Films)
Ross McElwee has been making personal chronicles masquerading as documentaries for nearly 50 years, carrying a camera around filming his own life—and those of his loved ones—through several feature films, the most famous of which is this 1986 masterpiece that has been rereleased in a restored version for its 40th anniversary.
Ostensibly an excuse for McElwee to follow General Sherman’s infamous Civil War “march to the sea” as Union forces pillaged and burned everything in their path on their way to destroying the Confederates’ spirit, the film is a fascinatingly offbeat glimpse at the director’s own relationships with various young Southern women, all with the then-still horrifyingly real specter of nuclear war hanging over everyone and everything. (The film’s memorably long subtitle is A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation.)
(Music Box Films)
Russ McElwee’s new film, coming 15 years after his last feature, Photographic Memory, is his most personal, chronicling his grief after his son Adrian died of a fentanyl overdose on Christmas Eve, 2016, at age 27. Another insightful, self-reflective and even self-lacerating McElwee self-portrait, Remake illustrates a difficult relationship with Adrian, who, as he got older, also became interested in filmmaking and began making visual records of events in his own life.
McElwee uses his own voluminous footage along with that shot by Adrian to grab hold of his son’s memory, as he says, to make sure he lived and is now gone. There’s also a parallel plotline as Hollywood comes calling with an absurd request to turn his classic Sherman’s March into a fiction feature. But Remake’s heart is McElwee working out his grief over and pride in his son through footage from his earlier films, where we see his children as youngsters. Touchingly, McElwee gives his mother’s mantra as his own: “Everything begins and ends with family.”
In-Theater Releases of the Week
American Summer
(Blue Harbor Entertainment)
In Michael W. Gray’s comedy-drama, nostalgia becomes sentimentality as young Mikey plays baseball, chases girls, and deals with his absent military dad and harried mom during a tumultuous teenage summer.
There’s good acting by Logan Gray as our protagonist and Mia Talerico as Kelly, the object of his teen desire, but Gray also had the not-so-great idea to show older Mikey, played decently by Steve Guttenberg, who’s our onscreen narrator—and when older Kelly shows up at the end, she’s played amateurishly by Christie Brinkley. It would have been better to focus on the kids—Mikey’s friends are a Benetton ad—whose antics are at least diverting.
(Strand Releasing/Film Forum, NYC)
Barbara Hammer, who died in 2019 at 79 of cancer, was a pioneering lesbian filmmaker who made dozens of personal films, from shorts to features, that brought a discerning eye to her challenging explorations of (often explicit) female sexuality.
Director Brydie O’Connor’s involving and ultimately moving portrait of this singular artist comprises Hammer’s own archival footage alongside sequences from her films, her own intelligent voiceover and the thoughts of her longtime partner, Florrie Burke.
Blu-ray Release of the Week
Trial by Jury/A Matter of Misconduct!
(Opus Arte)
This lively double bill of Gilbert & Sullivan’s first hit operetta, set in a courtroom that pits a jilted bride and her scheming groom, and a new operetta by composer Toby Hession and librettist Emma Jenkins, which takes the pulse of political corruption, mixes frivolousness and seriousness quite entertainingly.
This 2025 Scottish Opera production has terrific singing from both casts and choruses, marvelous musicmaking by the Scottish Opera orchestra under conductor Hession, and colorful stagings by, respectively, directors John Savournin and Laura Attridge. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.
Mark Adamo—Lysistrata
(Pentatone)
American composer Mark Adamo’s 2005 riff on the classic ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes has, in the past 20 years, gained even more relevance in a world riven by ethnic, sexual, gender and identity strife. Although Adamo’s rhyming libretto is quite wordy, it does reach Sondheim-like moments of witty eloquence, especially when married to Adamo’s own melodious music.
In this excellent 2025 recording, Boston’s Odyssey Opera gives an enthusiastic performance that doesn’t overdo either the comedy or the politics—the formidable voice cast is led by the terrific soprano Anya Matanovič in the title role and tenor Dominic Armstrong as Lysistrata’s lover, Nico, who leads the men of Athenian men in trying to change the minds of begging Athenian women withholding sex until men stop waging war. Gil Rose adroitly conducts Adamo’s challenging score.
September '26 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 04 September 2026 01:53
- Written by Kevin Filipski
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
Practical Magic
(Warner Bros)
Griffin Dunne’s pleasant enough 1998 movie about a family of women witches and the men who nearly upset their bond didn’t set the box office on fire but has become a cult item well-liked enough to merit a sequel, coming out next week.
Based on Alice Hoffman’s 1995 novel, it’s not a patch on something more sinister like The Witches of Eastwick (either John Updike’s novel or George Miller’s flawed but fun 1987 adaptation), but an entertaining cast led by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as sisters, Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing as their aunts and Goran Visnjic and Aidan Quinn as the meddling men helps it to the finish line. The film looks great in UHD; extras comprise a commentary with Dunne, Bullock, producer Denise DiNovi and composer Alan Silvestri as well as two short vintage featurettes.
(Cult Epics)
In his likably raunchy, nearly hardcore sex comedies, Italian director Tinto Brass unapologetically puts the female form front and center, probing his fresh-faced models nearly gynecologically. This 1995 feature, as its title implies, is an “adaptation” of fan letters he received, bringing to life erotic trysts and fantasies that he oversees onscreen.
If it lacks the artfulness of his other films like Frivolous Lola and Cheeky, it’s still the product of a singular creator of erotica. Dante Dalla Torre’s cinematography and the many ladies parading in front sparkle in 4K; extras include the film on a Blu-ray disc, a new commentary, Italian and English language tracks, and a 1995 Brass interview.
In-Theater Releases of the Week
How to Divorce During the War
(Zeitgeist/Kino Lorber)
In this often lacerating dark comedy, Marija, who runs a thriving startup in Vilnius, Lithuania, tells her floundering husband Vytus that she wants to break up—but the very next day, Russia invades Ukraine, making the couple’s lives more difficult to navigate in a suddenly topsy-turvy world that includes refugees, new loves and bitter acrimony.
Writer-director Andrius Blaževičius successfully balances emotional drama with biting satire as the couple’s fraught breakup becomes a stark metaphor for how forces from within and without can damage even the sturdiest relationship. It’s immaculately acted by Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė (Marija), Marius Repšys (Vytas) and especially the precociously talented Amelija Adomaitytė as young daughter Dovilė.
(Circle Collective)
In her auspicious debut as a writer-director-actor, the winning Lauren Caster plays Ro, a failed dancer who returns to SoCal from NYC to meet her birth father Gregory while also juggling a tempestuous relationship with her lesbian mother Susan, a possible boyfriend in coworker Zach and a new job at a senior care facility, Leisure World, that gives her a new perspective on life (and gives Caster the chance to amusingly riff on that name, i.e., Seizure World).
Caster is a refreshingly guileless screen presence, and her generosity as a triple-threat extends to the characters she’s written. The excellent cast also includes Tate Donovan (Gregory), Amy Aquino (Susan), Conor Donnally (Zach) and Marianne Muellerleile as Ethel, the orneriest of the seniors she works with.
DVD Release of the Week
Life Is Life
(Distrib Films US)
Based on a true story, this beguiling comedy follows the antics of down-on-their-luck residents of a forgotten region of Sardinia up in arms over the steadfast refusal of elderly shepherd Efisio to sell his ancestral land to a greedy Milan developer, who wants to build a luxury resort on the sparkling local beach. Director Riccardo Milani sometimes lays on the us-vs-them, working-class-vs-elite parallels too thickly, but there’s no denying the pointed comic, dramatic and even political points he scores throughout.
Non-actor Giuseppe Ignazio Loi is perfectly cast as the barely literate Efisio, while Virginia Raffaele is marvelously affecting as his stubborn daughter Francesca, his biggest ally after her initial skepticism.
Leoš Janáček—The Excursions of Mr. Brouček
(LSO Live)
Czech composer Leoš Janáček, who wrote some of the greatest operas of the 20th century, including Jenůfa, Káťa Kabanová, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropulos Case and From the House of the Dead, wrote this satirical two-part opera based on a famous Czech novel about a philistine named Brouček who, after heavy drinking, first visits the moon then goes back in time to 15th-century Prague.
It’s entertaining if not nearly as memorable as his classics, with Janáček’s colorful music more often skimming the surface rather than digging deeper into the characters and their tales. This 2025 concert recording, from London’s Barbican Hall, captures the opera’s antic energy, with Simon Rattle conducting the venerable London Symphony Orchestra and a top-notch chorus and cast of soloists.
Douglas Moore—Giants in the Earth
(Pentatone)
This opera by American Douglas Moore, which won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize in music, tells the story of a tragic romance among Norwegian American settlers in the Dakota territory in the late 19th century.
Despite its award-winning pedigree, the work has rarely been revived, and even this excellent world-premiere recording of a performance by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra and Chorus as well as a group of fine vocalists all under conductor Delta David Gier can’t make it gripping. Still, Moore’s music is certainly attractive and singer friendly.
Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra at Lincoln Center
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 02 September 2026 13:45
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Keri-Lynn Wilson leading the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra on August 25, 2026, at David Geffen Hall in New York City. Photo: Richard Termine / Met Opera
At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Tuesday, August 25th, I had the exceptional pleasure of attending a superb concert—the first of two on consecutive days—performed by the outstanding Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, under the impeccable direction of Keri-Lynn Wilson.
The event started splendidly with a sterling realization of the marvelous, one-movement Suite from the new opera by the Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets, The Mothers of Kherson. (I predict that this Suite will enter the orchestral repertory.) The extraordinary, Norwegian soprano, Lise Davidsen—whose terrific, debut recital at Carnegie Hall this June I have already reviewed here—then entered the stage for an unforgettable rendition of Richard Strauss’s magnificent Four Last Songs, from 1948, written for the legendary Kirsten Flagstad. The initial three lyrics in the sequence are exquisite poems by the major novelist, Hermann Hesse. The first of these, “Fruhling,” is the most optimistic of the set, while the remaining songs express a more fatalistic outlook, beginning with “September” and followed by “Going to Sleep.” The final song, “At Sunset,” is a setting of a poem by the great Romantic lyricist, Joseph, baron von Eichendorff. The singer and the ensemble were enthusiastically applauded.
The second half of the evening was comparably memorable, consisting of an enchanting version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s amazing Symphony No. 7. The first movement opens suspensefully with a Poco sostenuto introduction, at length anticipating its joyous, recurringly propulsive main body which at times reflects an almost pastoral ethos, although it finishes emphatically. The ensuing Allegretto is much more solemn in mood, but it too has an insistent—if much slower—rhythm; a central section has a sunnier, more lyrical quality, but the darker, more elegiac music soon returns, elaborated in a fugue-like episode—the movement closes somewhat abruptly, if satisfyingly.
The succeeding, energetic scherzo, is cheerful, even playful at moments, displaying the composer’s boundless capacity for surprise, but the second half of the movement becomes more serious in tone before the dance-like, initial music is recapitulated, although the second, statelier theme is soon forcefully restated—it too ends unexpectedly. The Allegro con brio finale is jubilant, dynamic and breathless, with lilting passages, and it builds to a rousing, triumphant conclusion.
A standing ovation elicited a fabulous encore: a beautiful arrangement of the Ukrainian national anthem.
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