Recalling a good friend, and a friend of Seattle

One thing theater director Daniel Sullivan will miss about famed playwright Wendy Wasserstein: her laugh, an infectious sound mingling a giggle with a guffaw.

Also, Wasserstein's answering machine. It featured "songs from Broadway musicals of the 1940s and '50s, which she loved, sung by Wendy herself or with her daughter, Lucy Jane."

When Wasserstein succumbed to cancer in a New York hospital Monday, at 55, Sullivan and other friends were expecting it. The Pulitzer Prize-honored author of "The Heidi Chronicles" and other popular works had been gravely ill and hospitalized for weeks.

But Sullivan, former artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre, is bound to feel a special sense of loss. Over two decades, at Seattle Rep and in New York, he collaborated closely with Wasserstein, directing the debuts of several of her plays, including "The Heidi Chronicles," "The Sisters Rosensweig" and, in 2005, "Third."

While staging the new Off-Broadway comedy "Rabbit Hole," Sullivan took a few moments recently to chat about his friend and colleague.

He recalled inviting Wasserstein to Seattle in the 1980s, to develop "Heidi Chronicles" in the Rep's New Plays workshop. "There was too much advice, too many voices when she was working at home in New York, too many friends telling her what she couldn't do. Wendy liked the isolation of being in Seattle."

The gregarious author also liked the give-and-take with audiences. "She loved post-play discussions, hearing people in Seattle talk about what they liked and didn't like in a play. She felt it helped her."

If Rep patrons warmed to "Heidi Chronicles," New York producers were leery about "a little play about an art historian, narrowly focused on the women's movement. They thought we were a little crazy to try moving it to Broadway."

But he believed Wasserstein's theatrical voice — comic, accessible, yet dappled with ambivalence and sorrow — could speak to a big audience.

"Not only did her plays invite you in, but they invited you in for a weekend with Wendy," he explained. "Her voice was extremely distinctive, funny and astute. But she did not write naturalism. She wrote highly structured dialogue."

Whether it was Heidi's mixed feelings about the feminist movement in "Heidi Chronicles," or a liberal scholar's difficulty in adapting old ideologies to new realities in "Third," Sullivan says her plays often shared a common theme: "The tension between the belief in an important utopian idea, and the failure of that idea to completely materialize."

Despite her wide social circle, joie de vivre and many achievements, Wasserstein suffered her own deep disappointments. She wrote comically yet ruefully about her struggles in finding a mate, gaining self-esteem, losing loved ones.

Mused Sullivan, "Wendy could get very depressed, and part of that had to do with the feeling that the reality of life was so much less than the heart hoped for."

After losing a beloved sister to cancer in the 1990s, Wasserstein did find profound joy in becoming a single parent. She described the medically harrowing 1999 birth of daughter Lucy Jane in a poignant essay collected in her book, "Shiksa Goddess; or How I Spent My Forties."

"She was thrilled about Lucy Jane, absolutely, and a good mother," Sullivan said, noting the child is now being cared for by "the very loving family" of the writer's brother, Bruce Wasserstein.

According to Sullivan, the playwright suffered from cancer for a long while but kept it private. And she worked "just as hard as ever" on last year's debut of "Third," revising the script right up to its opening.

Sullivan noted that Wasserstein helped raise funds to build the Rep's second stage, the Leo K. Theatre, and suggested the "best thing in the world would be if 'Third' got done at the Leo K. It would be a fitting memorial to Wendy." He didn't rule himself out as a possible director.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com