Wendy Wasserstein has satirical instincts and an eye and ear for the absurd, but she shows signs of harnessing these talents to a harder discipline.

Wendy Wasserstein 1950– © Thomas Victor 1984

Her play "Uncommon Women and Others" … is exuberant to the point of coltishness. Miss Wasserstein, who is young, uses her very large gift for being funny and acute with a young virtuosity that is often self-indulgent.

But there is more. Unexpectedly, just when her hilarity threatens to become gag-writing, she blunts it with compassion. She blunts her cleverness with what, if it is not yet remarkable wisdom, is a remarkable setting-out to look for it. She lets her characters—some of them, anyway—get away from her and begin to live and feel for themselves.

"Uncommon Women," is about women in a time of changing traps: new ones, set and hidden in the same current of feminine consciousness and...