An American Daughter – 8 August 2026

One of the great beauties and joys of being an American is how many ways there are to define what an American is. Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter shows a diverse cross section of 1997’s Americans in her fictional piece about Lyssa Dent Hughes (Jean Lichty), a woman nominated for Surgeon General who inadvertently offends traditional housewives and must pay the price politically. Exposing double standards, the show illuminates just how careful a woman must be if she wants to live in public view, as well as how different the concept of public view is in a time with cameras and recordings than it was in the time of Lyssa’s ancestor, esteemed general and former president Ulysses S. Grant.

To surround and influence Lyssa on her journey, Wasserstein creates an admirably diverse set of opinions which in and of itself proves Lyssa fit for representing the public health of all Americans, not just those like her. Lyssa is a Democrat with a Republican senator for a father, a Black Jew for a childhood best friend, a liberal writing professor for a husband, a radical feminist who is one of her husband’s former students, an openly gay younger Republican friend, and a television personality whose true intentions are tough to decipher. This spectrum of opinion ought to shape Lyssa into someone nuanced and easy to like. Unfortunately, Lichty’s performance was not up to the standards of her fellow performers. Lichty, incidentally also the founder and executive director of LaFemme Theatre Productions, is a disappointing casting choice for this role. She is expressionless for most of the performance and fails to communicate the weight and meaning of her lines. Though at one point she does raise her voice, her face remains unfeeling, which makes it hard for the audience to remain invested in her character’s candidacy. Much as the icebox cake in the script undoes Lyssa’s forward momentum, Lichty’s performance undoes this production.

An American Daughter depicts an increasingly rare scenario that is timely for today’s world– a scenario where everyone can acknowledge that even those most different from themselves have a spark of something right in their existence and ideology. Today, few of us have the time and patience. This production takes place a mere 30 years ago, and, in some respects, even though it is a powerful depiction of gender inequality, it shows us a better world– a world where people listened before speaking. A world where love could exist across political aisles and respect was the modus operandi, not a badge to be earned. 

I enjoyed the questions this production asked about who speaks for women and if it really is possible to speak for all women. Though the conclusion has Lyssa dropping out of the race and receding from public view, it doesn’t show her as broken. Rather, it shows her choosing a woman she really cares about, her best friend Judith B. Kaufman (Montego Glover). Glover’s fabulous performance of Judith shows a woman in need of direction in her life, and this individual connection to Lyssa is her entire world– more than her patients, her faith, and her politics combined. Though certainly not positing that women are best in the private sector, this ending is a reminder that doing good on an individual level is still changing someone’s world.

I attended this performance on a press pass from JT Public Relations.