Sisters Rosensweig Reading Reminds Us Why Everybody Loved Wendy

In a city awash in fund-raising benefits, it takes something special to bring in big bucks on a frigid winter night, and Lincoln Center Theater came up with a winner on March 5: a reading of Wendy Wasserstein's The Sisters Rosensweig at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre with Stockard Channing, Christine Baranski and Edie Falco in the title roles, plus original cast member Robert Klein recreating his performance as faux furrier Mervyn Kant. With a seated dinner of chicken pot pie on the mezzanine of Avery Fisher Hall thrown in, the evening became the company's most successful benefit ever, raising more than $1 million.

Loosely based on the lives of Wasserstein and her sisters, the play takes place in the fancy drawing room of the oldest sib, Sara Goode, a super-successful 54-year-old banker living in London Channing. Arriving for her birthday are Gorgeous Teitelbaum, a radio shrink from Newton, MA, who yearns for a real Chanel suit Baranski, and Pfeni Rosensweig, a globe-trotting journalist Falco in the role based on the playwright. Even the supporting cast for the benefit was stellar: John Michael Higgins as Pfeni's bi-sexual boyfriend, Simon Jones as the uptight Brit who's dating the equally uptight Sara before Merv comes on the scene, Ari Graynor as Sara's teenage daughter and Peter Scanavino as her blue-collar boyfriend. But the real star of this show was Wendy Wasserstein, still sorely missed a year after her death.

In introducing the evening, Andre Bishop declared that the success of The Sisters Rosensweig was a lifesaver after what he termed "a rocky start" as Lincoln Center Theater's artistic director in 1992. The play became an instant hit at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre in October of that year and transferred to Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theater a few months later, running for 574 performances. The sisters were originally played by Jane Alexander, Madeline Kahn who won a Tony and Frances McDormand, directed by Daniel Sullivan, who helped Wasserstein shape the play and returned to direct the March 5 reading.

Hearing The Sisters Rosensweig again, almost 15 years later, is a bittersweet experience on many levels. First, you realize that no one writes comedies like this anymore. In the script's preface, reprinted in the benefit program, Wasserstein cited Chekhov, Coward, Kaufman and Hart as influences. As Andre Bishop put it, "Wendy knew a good joke when she heard it, and she knew a good joke when she wrote it." But as a woman born in Brooklyn in 1950, she also brought a unique perspective to the stage, deftly skewering stereotypes about sibling rivalry, parenthood, religion, romantic love and the role of women in contemporary society, pulling all the strands together in a package that never felt like a "very special episode" of some sitcom.

The Heidi Chronicles may be Wasserstein's most famous play, but The Sisters Rosensweig is the most touching in its combination of humor, sadness and hopefulness. "This is not an angry play," she wrote in her preface. "It is one of possibilities." The premature loss of her distinctive theatrical voice is an undercurrent to re-hearing every line, especially when a sister laments, "Life is random," and the first act ends with Sinatra singing "Just the Way You Look Tonight." Though the play, set in 1991, doesn't feel dated, one line draws a derisive laugh: "The decade of the bimbo is over." If only!

After just one rehearsal, the benefit cast gave a lively reading of the script. The actors made no attempt to erase memories of the original production indeed, they sat beneath a gorgeous rendering of John Lee Beatty's Broadway set but managed to infuse the parts with their own personalities. In her second iconic midlife role in the past month following Carlotta in the Encores! Follies, Baranski put a bright spin on Gorgeous, and Falco was a grounding presence in the challenging part of Pfeni. Klein, once again wonderful as Merv, established a lovely chemistry with Channing as they sat side by side on stools.

But in the end, the biggest ovation came when Brigitte Lacombe's photo of Wasserstein was lowered from the ceiling to the strains of "Shine on Harvest Moon," which ends the play. Her mother, Lola, was in the audience, along with sister Georgette the model for Gorgeous and various nieces and nephews; oldest sister Sandra the model for Sara had died of cancer in 1997. For Wasserstein's fans—many of whom paid $75 to watch the performance from loge seats—this lovingly presented evening brought back memories of a writer whose graceful voice and grounded sensibility are much missed on the New York stage.