Over the last two days, I have been getting a lot of page hits from people Googling Wendy Wasserstein, since I posted a mini-review of her last play (“Third”) about four months ago.
At the time, I was unaware of her illness, but I thought the play — initially produced at a small Jewish Community Center theater in 2004 before it moved to Lincoln Center for a sold-out run — had the quality of a coda:
For Wendy Wasserstein, the war is over, the significant feminist battles won long ago, replaced by a new war against people like her professor [in “Third”] — with some new (or old) lessons to be learned. It is an eloquent and touching play.
Three days ago, she passed away, at the age of 55. Peggy Noonan has a gracious tribute today, which reminded me of something else about the play:
Wendy Wasserstein was a gifted artist and a fine person. . . . She was warm, brilliant and witty, and her work captured a part, a piece, of our era. Word that she was dying spread before word that she was sick, and the shock of it, when her lymphoma was reported in New York a few months ago, was like hearing that Michael Kelley had died. . . .
Wasserstein’s plays were beloved of liberals who lauded her as spokeswoman of a modern feminist point of view. Fair enough, but she struck me as altogether cannier and more grounded than that, and more independent too.
I had a conversation with her a few years ago in which she told me of her concern at the increasing politicization of higher education. I was struck by the depth of her concern; she had clearly spent a lot of time observing, finding out the facts, and coming to conclusions. . . .
Wasserstein’s work had no cruelty and little fear. Her last play, "Third," dealt with a left-wing professor who comes to question her own assumptions, and to wonder, even, if deep in her heart she does not harbor bigotries. This was the work of someone who wasn’t stuck, wasn’t cowed, who was in fact questioning, questing.
The professor in “Third” has a friend, a former on-the-barricades comrade who has moved on, to a firmer, more grounded life. The friend learns she has cancer — a battle somewhat more serious than the liberal fight the professor is still immersed in — but the friend confides that her life has nevertheless taken a wonderful new turn, something she never expected. She is dating a rabbi.
Act Three of a wonderful life was too short. May her memory be for a blessing.