Old Money

by Wendy Wasserstein

A dinner party in an ornate mansion on the fashionable Upper East Side of Manhattan provides the scene for this witty and incisive play. Set in two eras--the early 1900s and our own Gilded Age--the characters move effortlessly from one period to the other. The host, a contemporary master of high-risk arbitrage, steps in and out of character as a robber baron of an earlier time. His guests of today include a Hollywood director, a not-so-cutting-edge sculptor, an online lingerie designer, an aggressive publicist, and an aging historian. Their counterparts from the past are the great man's rebellious son, a grand dame of New York society, the architect who built the mansion originally, and the maids and servants who maintain it.
In this dance of rich storytelling and social commentary, it becomes strikingly clear that while old money has become new, little else has changed over the years. Children still rebel against their controlling parents, women still hope for love, and greed, snobbery, and angst persist.

Genres: Plays

120 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Wendy Wasserstein was an award-winning American playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. She was the recipient of the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Reviews

[Martha · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a reader of fiction and non-fiction, I'm hardly proficient in plays. Filling in those gaping spaces between script and performance can be a struggle for me. That said, I enjoyed this. The 100-year span between the story's timelines is beautifully drawn (though I'll admit to much flipping pages back to the cast of characters as each actor toggled between dual roles). The tension between superficiality and permanence, greed and humanity, comes through even to this lover of the Victorian novel garrulous narrative voice.

[John Geddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another examination of the decline of the old upper class, but somehow in Wasserstein’s hands it is a lot more warm than you see elsewhere. It’s still very critical of the upper class (both in the modern period and at 1900) and the author has a much better eye of character than most. Not my favorite of her works, but profoundly sad before moving to nostalgia and optimism.

[Simon · Rating 1 out of 5]

To be perfectly blunt, a good editor/agent/friend would have stopped this play from seeing the light of common day. This may be the single worst thing ever written by a Pulitzer-winning playwright. Or even by most other playwrights. There is an old adage about writing what you know about, right? I've always thought it was a silly adage, but in this case the decision to write Old Money causes all of her faults as a playwright writing for the commercial stage to come sharply into focus. Again, bluntly, she is utterly unconvincing as a sort of ersatz Edith Wharton (to whom Wasserstein invites comparison in this edition's introduction). All of the WASPS dart about with names like Vivian and Ovid, either maundering on about their past (the Vivian character) or what robber barons they are (his grandfather). But no one, and I mean no one, talks remotely like a human being. Also, and I don't mean to be picky (SPOILER ALERT), but there is a major party occurring in the modern section of the play, and yet no one other than her chosen characters is ever seen. That must be some mansion.

The whole "Let's Do the Time Warp Again!" conceit isn't all that difficult to sort out, although I'll bet it made life merry hell in the wings for the actors. But even there --- characters are singing songs from the Gilded Age. The play is set in 1917. There are a lot of moments like that.

Wasserstein's reputation will rest on Uncommon Women, Heidi and Isn't It Romantic, as well as her essays. It is possible that had she lived, she might have carved out new areas to explore, but her life was tragically short.

[Beth Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A concept with much potential but slightly less pizzazz in the final product. Still, I failed to leave the house for cocktails as I stayed home reading it, so that must count for something.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasserstein is in full Stoppard mode here, as past and present collide in an elegant New York manse. It's a charming play, but I think I may be damning it with faint praise.

[Angelique · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh, not the greatest. Seems a bit Noel Coward-y and doesn't really say anything like the other plays. Not her best.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

A conceit I loved, a plot and characters I did not. I loved so much that the fluidity of the time travel was written into the play. It would be an understatement to say that nothing happens, and the characters talk like yuppie caricatures for some reason.