THEATER REVIEW : Time Fails ‘The Heidi Chronicles’

In spite of its Pulitzer Prize, Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles,” at Saddleback College’s Studio Theatre, has some of the problems rampant in many current plays.

“Heidi’s” 11 scenes and two monologues, cinematic in their brevity and shallowness of character development, do not give a director much help in creating a dramatic through-line (as opposed to a vast historical chronology).

It’s a big problem for the actress playing Heidi, who is followed from a high-school dance in 1965, through wars, romantic disillusionment, depression and success, to her adoption of an ethnic child in 1989 and her showing of a brave new face looking into the ‘90s.

There’s a lot of period shtick. Heidi, an art historian whose only interest is female painters, campaigns for Eugene McCarthy and jousts with feminism in a consciousness-raising group. She demonstrates for “Women in Art” and against Vietnam and struggles with a career that doesn’t provide the fulfillment she feels a man would. She has very little time to find out, or let the audience find out, much about Heidi herself, except in a very surface manner.

Director Patrick J. Fennell plays Wasserstein’s game well, wisely lets the script speak for itself and keeps the tempos up, except for some interminable and unnecessarily extended waits between the scenes. These plays with itty-bitty scenes have to move like gangbusters. What dramatic threads there are come unraveled in the darkness.

Kathy Genovese, as Heidi, does a good job of trying to fill out the characterization with her own insights. There is more to this Heidi than the playwright has written. Patricia J. Francisco is also very good as Heidi’s bosom buddy Susan, who shares Heidi’s problems at each stop across the calendar.

*

Heidi’s romantic interests begin with Peter (John Richard Petersen), a glib poetic type who becomes a prominent New York pediatrician and finally confesses to Heidi that he is gay. Petersen has a comfortable, solid quality that fits Peter’s personality to perfection, but sometimes he overplays Peter’s campiness, a move that’s illogical and unnecessary.

Stephen R. Flores is Scoop Rosenbaum, Heidi’s off-and-on bed partner down the line, who becomes rich and marries a Jewish Southern belle. Flores captures Scoop’s youthful radical energy well and translates it easily into Scoop’s midlife aggressiveness.

Joshua L. Taylor, Jaylene Weaver, Tisha Bellantuoni and Kristin More very capably double and triple as the many others who hang around the fringe of Heidi’s exhausting existence.

Walter B. Huntoon’s plain setting of an archway with a door at each side has the simplicity that helps make this kind of scattershot writing work. But there are too many pieces of furniture and props, which only make the set changes slower. At least he doesn’t bring the kitchen sink in, which Wasserstein does by introducing an out-of-left-field AIDS scene near the end. But maybe that’s what helped win the Pulitzer. All these causes look good, but they obscure the lonely lost woman the play is really about.

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* “The Heidi Chronicles,” Saddleback College’s Studio Theatre, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo. Tonight-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 3 p.m. Ends Sunday. SOLD OUT. (714) 582-4656. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Kathy Genovese: Heidi Holland Patricia J. Francisco: Susan Johnston John Richard Petersen: Peter Patrone Stephen R. Flores: Scoop Rosenbaum Joshua L. Taylor: Chris Boxer, Mark, Waiter, Ray Jaylene Weaver: Jill, Debbie, Lisa Tisha Bellantuoni: Fran, Monica, Molly, Betsy, April Kristin More: Becky, Clara, Denise

A Saddleback College department of theater production of Wendy Wasserstein’s drama. Directed by Patrick J. Fennell. Scenic design: Walter B. Huntoon. Lighting/sound design: Kevin Cook. Costume design: Charles Castagno. Stage manager: Tina Suttile.