The plot follows Heidi Holland from high school in the 1960s to her career as a successful art historian more than twenty years later. The play's main themes deal with the changing role of women during this time period, describing both Heidi's ardent feminism during the 1970s and her eventual sense of betrayal during the 1980s. Though most of the characters are women, there are two important male characters; Peter Patrone, a gay pediatrician who is arguably Heidi's best friend, and Scoop Rosenbaum, a magazine editor who marries and has many affairs, and with whom Heidi has a tense friendship.
It was adapted into a Made-for-TV Movie in 1995 starring Jamie Lee Curtis.
Tropes:
- Babies Ever After - The ending seen is with Heidi and her newly adopted Panamanian baby.
- Babies Make Everything Better - See above
- Camp Gay - Peter can be this; it depends on the production, of course but his singing the "Shoop Shoop" song and his rather theatrical diction would seem to lean towards this interpretation.
- Coming-Out Story - Peter comes out to Heidi when she's in town protesting an art exhibit.
- Gayngst - Sort of with Peter toward the end of the play. He's understandably pretty angsty about the fact that tons of his friends are dying due to the AIDS crisis, though he himself is not infected.
- The '80s: Act 2 takes place entirely in this decade, ending in the present (at the time) of 1988, and shows Heidi's increasing disillusionment with the shallowness and retreat of feminism in this era.
- Evil Former Friend - Not exactly evil, but Susan is a shallow, flighty, self absorbed person who turns her back entirely on her ideals and seems to be the personification of the aspects of feminism that Heidi feel disillusioned with.
- Girlboss Feminist: Heidi's longtime friend Susan Johnston, once a feminist sheepherder at a radical women's health and legal collective during the 1970s, has by the 1980s taken a job as an executive of a television production company that "wanted someone with a feminist and business background". She arranges a luncheon with her friend only to pitch her a TV show idea she wants Heidi to come work as a consultant for. Heidi is left disillusioned by her friend, and by the trajectory of feminism in general note , after this meeting. Downplayed since she's never abusive, but is portrayed as shallow and self-absorbed, and has been this way since before she became a Girlboss.
- High-Powered Career Woman: Susan becomes this by the end of the play as a media executive. This is portrayed negatively as the sort of self-serving feminism that makes Heidi feel abandoned by the movement.
- Meaningful Name
- Scoop is in journalism. Go figure. Lampshaded by Scoop himself in the scene where he and Heidi first meet.
- Peter mentions reading Heidi while working late at the hospital and asks Heidi (Holland) if she's reached the second half of her journey where she uses what she's learned on her life's travels.
- The '70s: The rest of Act 1 is spent in this era, emphasized by Heidi joining the Feminist Movement.
- The '60s: The first two scenes takes place during this time period, with the first in middle of the decade to emphasize Heidi's innocence, with pop songs like "The Shoop Shoop Song" playing, and the second in 1968 during the Eugene McCarthy campaign, showing Heidi's political awakenings coinciding with meeting Scoop.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss - Her relationship with Scoop is something like this.
- Southern Belle Scoop's wife Lisa.
- Title Drop - Heidi's friend Susan says something to the affect of "I've missed the Heidi chronicles", meaning that she and Heidi don't talk enough.
- Will They or Won't They? - Scoop and Heidi. It ends up with him marrying Lisa.
