Talkin' 'Bout My Generation

The revival of a highly regarded play can either enhance or diminish its reputation. Consider the current productions of two very different works--by playwrights who share a surname--a couple of decades after their premieres. If Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July appears today to be a better play than memory allows, August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom has far less of an impact than it originally did. Such reassessments are surprising in each case: Having launched August Wilson's career, Ma Rainey had grown in stature, along with its playwright's reputation. Fifth of July, on the other hand, focused on 1960s radicals who reunite a decade later, and it seemed permanently wedded to the post-Watergate period of its debut.

After opening in 1978 at the Circle Rep Theater, Fifth of July transferred to Broadway two years later, with most of its cast intact. Its present run has just been extended at Off Broadway's Signature Theatre, which has devoted its current season to Lanford Wilson, including an eye-opening revival of his Burn This last fall.

Lanford Wilson has always had a rare knack for getting inside his character's skin and revealing his or her humanity naturally. In Sympathetic Magic (1997)--arguably his most ambitious, and certainly his most underrated, play--Wilson investigated cosmic concerns by assembling a couple of astronomers and an anthropologist with a sculptor and a priest, providing each with an individual voice.

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