The Heidi Chronicles
The Heidi Chronicles
By Wendy Wasserman
Directed by Katrina Ploof
Starring Leander Suleiman, Alexis Jackson, Todd Allen Long, Michael Marinaccio
Mad Cow Theater, Orlando FL</strong>
Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill, and that’s why idealism shines brightest in the young. In the fetid days of Vietnam and Eugene McCarthy, Heidi Holland (Suleiman) discovers politics of the most liberal kind – free love, free drugs, and voting Democrat without shame. All her friends are out to change the world – Scoop Rosenbaum (Marinaccio) runs a radical paper with an unpaid circulation of 362, Peter Patrone (Long) struggles with revealing his homosexuality and medical school, while Susan Johnson (Jackson) discovers boys and feminism. Heidi works the art world, and while she knows what’s best for women in general, she’s not so good at picking what’s best for her. It’s sort of a “Think local, Act global” problem. Her bumpy relation with Scoop crashes on his desire for a non-competitive wife who won’t notice his girl friends, and Heidi spend life bouncing from minor triumph to minor disaster. It’s a classic “Getting what you want doesn’t make you happy” story.
While the story has it strident moments, it’s really about a woman who is loved, but can’t find it on her own terms. Suleiman looks both lost and timeless, and somewhere in the second act you know she’s likely to spend here golden years with three cats and a subscription to the New Republic. Marinaccio continues to refine the Perfect Jerk persona he’s rehearsed since the Impact Theater days – he can charm the pants off a nun and then steal her crucifix. Heidi’s good advice comes from the soft and stable Mr. Long, everywoman’s Ideal Gay Friend, while Jackson’s over-achieving Hollywood producer role shows there is an alternative to idealism, and it pays much better.
We loll in an infusion of nostalgia here, with feminist slogans substituting for furniture and a flicker of iconic photos flashing on a screen giving a sense of time passing. Motown music provided a uniting thematic element, and we are forced to judge results by two tests – happiness with today’s situation, and the results of yesterday’s ideals. I suspect the world is slightly better for all of our agonizing, and who would deny us ex-hippies this minor pleasure of believing we did it all by singing loud?
For more information on Mad Cow, please visit http://www.madcowtheatre.com
