Old Money

Old Money

Reviewed by Elyse Sommer

· Wendy Wasserstein’s new play, ‘Old Money’, takes the doyenne of the feminist movement into territory we’ve come to associate with Edith Wharton and Louis Auchincloss, New York at the turn of the 20^th Century.

‘Old Money’ meshes the world of New York during the Gilded Age and New York today.

· There are two unrelated families, the Old Money-Old New York Pfeiffers, and the New Money-New York Now Bernsteins. The connecting thread to tie the two parallel stories together is an old-upper East Side mansion currently owned by a New Money mega-millionaire, Jeffrey Bernstein.

· The device to set Ms. Wasserstein’s time-travelling tale of two families in motion are two parties. The first is thrown by Bernstein to polish his social image by showing off his restoration of the mansion to its original grandeur.

· We meet only Bernstein (Mark Harelik) and his son Ovid (Charlie Hofheimer) and six of the guests, with everyone else in the mansion’s garden. Madeleine Albright and the various other luminaries mentioned, the hired musicians and cast members who need to clear the stage for duologues. These trips to the garden also allow the actos to switch into the costumes required for their double roles as the hosts, kin and guests of the second shindig, hosted by the mansion’s builder and original occupant, Tobias Pfeiffer (Dan Butler).

· Money, real estate, social acceptance, subjects fascinating, especially to New Yorkers.

Ms. Wasserstein has adroity constructed her dual universe for smooth time traveling between past to present and, finally, even a trip into the future. The double casting cleverly undercores the parallels.

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Academic year 2008/2009