The new production of the 1997 play “An American Daughter” has so much going for it that it takes a while to realize how much of a clunker it is.  Written by the late Wendy Wasserstein (her third Broadway comedy after  The Heidi Chronicles and The Sisters Rosensweig),  it focuses on one Lyssa Dent Hughes (portrayed by Jean Lichty), a fixture in Washington D.C. society.  The daughter of a U.S. Senator, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Ulysses S. Grant,  Lyssa is an accomplished public health professional, who has been nominated to be Surgeon General of the United States. But her nomination is derailed because of massive public backlash when it comes out that she ignored a notice for jury duty.

The new production, which reportedly draws on eight different drafts that Wasserstein wrote over the years, features a stellar ensemble – such reliable talents as Montego Glover, Robert Sean Leonard, Dakin Matthews and Mary Beth Peil as Lyssa’s best friend, husband, father and stepmother, respectively. Each delivers lines that have the rhythm of sophisticated banter, and seem loaded with pointed, topical political commentary, especially about the status of women in society.

The portraits of some of the secondary characters are vivid: Glover is Dr. Judith B. Kaufman, Lyssa’s oldest friend (they met at Miss Porter’s), a Black Jewish oncologist. Divorced from a gay man,  she has been trying for a long time to get pregnant through a fertility clinic and become a single mother. 

Morrow (Ryan Spahn), a 30-year-old gay, conservative columnist, another long-time friend of the family, who drops subversive bon mots like a modern Oscar Wilde. Quincy Quince (Carmen Zilles) a former student of Lyssa’s husband Walter, is an ambitious, not-very-bright next-wave feminist writer.

Directed by Sarna Lapine, who previously helmed the acclaimed Broadway revival of “Sunday in the Park with George” and the Jean Smart vehicle “Call Me Izzy,”  the production moves smoothly through its two-plus hours, and features an inviting set of a Georgetown townhouse overlooking a beautiful garden. 

 But “An American Daughter” offers surprisingly little actual wit or insight, and even the one-liners that elicit some chuckles feel imposed by the playwright rather than flowing credibly from the characters. 

“Have you been to Cincinnati recently, sir? One out of ten Republicans there is gay,” Morrow says at one point to Senator Hughes, a conservative Republican from Indiana.

“That explains why the Cincinnati airport is in Kentucky,” the Senator replies. “Transport homophobia.”

There is something not completely convincing about any of the characters, even though several are recognizably based on real-life figures. 

Even the design has a downside: Yes, the set is appealing, but many of the costumes worn by this supposedly elite group of Washington insiders are distractingly dowdy. I notice that the credits list a costume “consultant” rather than a designer, but I won’t assume the off-putting clothing reflect an unintentional lack of style; it’s more likely that they are deliberately intended to convey a message (Maybe: These characters are just like everyday Americans in their indifference to fashion.) Still,  that doesn’t make them any more fun to look at. 

Wasserstein won the Tony Award for Best Play, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and  the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for women playwrights, all for her Broadway debut, “The Heidi Chronicles,” which is widely considered both an embodiment and critique of second-wave feminism; in the playwright’s telling, the modern women’s liberation movement began idealistic and activist in the 1960s and evolved into isolation and disillusion in the 1980s.  Some of the same themes are present in “The American Daughter,” but the main driver are two specific controversies from the 1990s.  One was the backlash in 1992 when Hillary Clinton, a successful lawyer and the wife of a presidential candidate, said:  “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.” The other was the 1993 series of incidents known as “Nannygate,”  when President Clinton’s successive nominations for Attorney General, Zoë Baird and Kimba Wood, both fell through because of revelations that they had hired undocumented nannies for their young children, and in Baird’s case had failed to pay the Social Security tax for her nanny and chauffeur.

The blatant sexism in the targeting of these accomplished women clearly inspired the playwright’s outrage; Lyssa  is condemned in public polls as “condescending and elite” for her casual attitude toward jury duty, and for her alleged dismissiveness towards her mother (who died when Lyssa was 14) as “an ordinary Indiana housewife who took pride in her icebox cakes and cheese pimento canapés.”

 One could easily argue that sexism is alive and well  in Trump’s decision to oust Attorney General Pam Bondi,  Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem,  Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard – while keeping in office the equally problematic Attorney General Todd Blanche, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and FBI Director Kash Patel.

But the more salient point about Trump’s appointees, both male and female, is that they are utterly unfit for office, while nobody questioned the professional competence of the women Clinton nominated.  This makes the core plot of “An American Daughter” feel less than timely.

An American Daughter
La Femme Theater Productions at Signature through September 20
Running time: Two and a half hours including an intermission
Tickets: $59.00 – $149.00 
Written by Wendy Wasserstein
Directed by Sarna Lapine.
Set design by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams, costume consultant Risa Ando, lighting design by Alan C. Edwards, sound design by Darron L West, props design by Kathy Fabian / Propstar, dramaturg Amy Stoller
Cast: Montego Glover as Dr. Judith B. Kaufman, Robert Sean Leonard as Walter Abrahmsom, Jean Lichty as Lyssa Dent Hughes, Dakin Matthews as Senator Alan Hughes, Mary Beth Peil as Charlotte Chubby Hughes, Ryan Spahn as Morrow McCarthy, Will DeVary as Billy Robbins, Chris Ghaffari as Timber Tucker, and Carmen Zilles as Quincy Quince.