About the Play:

Isn't It Romantic has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Female Scenes and Female/Male Scenes.

Isn't It Romantic is a full-length comedy by Wendy Wasserstein. A brightly witty, trenchantly observant contemporary comedy that follows two friends in their late twenties as they try to navigate the jungle of 1980s New York to seek fulfillment, self-respect, romance and take-out food. Immediately relatable to anyone who has ever wondered what they truly want from life, Isn't It Romantic remains current in a changing world.

Isn't It Romantic deals with the hilarious and touchingly revealing post-college careers (and dilemmas) of two former classmates: a short, slightly plump would-be writer named Janie Blumberg, and her tall, thin, gorgeous WASP friend, Harriet Cornwall. Both are struggling to escape from lingering parental domination and to establish their own lives and identities as educated women in the 1980s. In Janie's case this leads to an inconclusive involvement with a young Jewish doctor who calls her "Monkey," while Harriet assails the world of big business and has an affair with her hard-driving (and married) boss. Told in a fast-moving series of inventive, alternately hilarious and touchingly revealing scenes, the play explores their parallel stories with uncommon wit and wisdom – resulting, ultimately, in a heightened awareness which, while not providing all the answers, goes a long way toward achieving the maturity and self-assuredness that both protagonists so desperately desire.

Isn't It Romantic premiered in 1979 off-Broadway at the Phoenix Theatre and became a box-office hit picked by Time magazine as one of the 10 best plays of 1983 when it reopened two years later at New York's renowned Playwright's Horizons, before transferring to the larger Plymouth Theatre and running for 733 performances. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional repertory, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 4 male

What people say:

"Isn't It Romantic is romantic – also bright, funny, sentimental, and throughout inching toward wisdom." — Time Magazine

"…one of the funniest and most satisfying shows in town… If Dorothy Parker were a playwright today, she might have written this endearingly acid comedy." — Variety

"…[Wendy Wasserstein is] among the funniest and most inventive writers around…." — The New Yorker

"…a nouvelle cuisine comedy." — New York Times

About the Playwright:

Wendy Wasserstein (1950-2006) was an American playwright, novelist, and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. She received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989 for her play, The Heidi Chronicles, often touted as a precursor to the HBO television series, Sex and the City. Over the course of her career, spanning four decades, she wrote eleven plays and is one of those rare playwrights whose work is performed regularly in schools and community theater as well as commercial venues. She was admired both for the warmth and the satirical cool of her writing; each of her plays and books captures an essence of the time, makes us laugh, and leaves us wiser.