Timely play gets off to a shaky start

When I was teaching at Ohio State University, there was one semester that I included Wendy Wasserstein’s play “An American Daughter” on the syllabus of a course on contemporary American drama.

I taught this admittedly less than stellar play because it is packed with issues of significance to US citizens and I knew it would spark interesting discussion.

I wanted my students to learn how the media often distorts the truth, evades real issues, and drives a national discourse focused on the trivial and inane.

But it is precisely because Wasserstein packs so much into her play that it fails as a work of drama. The play was written in 1997 when the then-First Lady Hillary Clinton was being harassed for saying she’d rather pursue a career than stay at home and bake cookies. Her husband was also under fire when it was learned that his appointment for Attorney General had employed an undocumented immigrant to care for her children. Wasserstein uses both incidents as plot devices for her play.

Liberal icon Lyssa Dent Hughes seems to have it all: loving family, successful career, great friends, and now the president has nominated her for Surgeon General. The plot hinges on a TV interview conducted in Lyssa and her husband’s home. Unlikely as it might seem, the Hughes’s have assembled in their living room at the time of the interview their gay conservative friend Morrow, as well as Lyssa’s staunchly conservative father, a Republican senator for Indiana. A media firestorm ensues when Morrow casually announces before millions of television viewers that Lyssa once evaded jury duty.

Hillary Clinton is, of course, now running for president and, once again, the subject of intense media scrutiny for possible malfeasance (whether for her role in Benghazi, the email scandal or controversy surrounding the Clinton Foundation; take your pick).

In an obviously very well-timed production, “An American Daughter” is currently being performed at Vortex Theatre. Director Leslee Richards has done her best with a play that at times seems like it was pasted together with media zingers. Unfortunately, the production is marred by a number of weak performances. Joel D. Miller is simply not able to convey the necessary charisma of a media personality hungry for high ratings; nor does Jesus Banuelos successfully characterize a professional spin doctor. Not only that, almost every actor in the cast was ill prepared on opening night, stumbling over their lines from beginning to end. It was clear the show needed another week of rehearsal.

On the positive side, Angela Littleton — despite not being quite ready to open — gives a marvelous performance as Lyssa’s troubled, infertile best friend, the oncologist Judith B. Kaufman. Gene Dunne is persuasive as the kindly Senator who nonetheless has, according to his own daughter, spent his career “robbing from the poor to give to the rich.” Yolanda Luchetti Knight is effective as his somewhat dim, but kindhearted, wife. Maymie Mitchell is appropriately opportunistic as the new face of feminism, a rising media star shrewdly able to insert her book, “Prisoner of Gender,” in front of the TV camera at just the right moment. This production should get better as it continues.

Richards has staged the play in the round, which works well to convey the intense envelopment Lyssa endures. For media junkies who can’t get enough politics and scandal, you may want to consider seeing this show.

Playing through Oct. 16. Visit vortexabq.org or call 247-8600 for reservations.