Characterizing The Heidi Chronicles as Wasserstein's "best work to date," Kramer offers apositive review of the play's Off-Broadway debut. Praising the playwright for avoiding moralizing in her work, the critic assesses that "Wasserstein's portrait of womanhood always remains complex."

At the emotional turning point of "The Heidi Chronicles, " Wendy Wasserstein's manless heroine Heidi Holland (Joan Allen), an essayist and art-history professor, is supposed to deliver a speech at the Plaza Hotel. The occasion for the speech is an alumnae luncheon, the topic "Women, Where Are We Going?" We've seen Heidi speak in public before—in the classroom sequences that, prologue-like, begin each act—and we've grown familiar with the mock girls'-school bonhomie she exhibits toward the women painters who constitute her particular area of expertise. Ordinarily, the public Dr. Holland is a model of wry composure. On this occasion, however, instead of giving a speech (she hasn't...