LOS ANGELES -- A presidential appointee's personal misstep is disclosed and the frenzy begins. Cameras track her every move, friends spill their guts on television, and self-anointed pundits weigh in on her fate.
The ordeal of Lyssa Dent Hughes in "An American Daughter," Wendy Wasserstein's television adaptation of her 1997 Broadway play, makes for a carnival ride through our topsy-turvy world swirling with sound bites and stereotypes.The movie, debuting Monday at 7 p.m. on Lifetime, blends delicious "Network"-like satire and emotional angst as it thrusts at questions of women in power, fidelity and what it sees as a growing national fondness for superficiality.
Hughes (a perfectly tuned performance by Christine Lahti) is a wife, mother and prominent physician -- and a descendant, no less, of Ulysses S. Grant -- who is awaiting certain confirmation as surgeon general.
Then her husband (Tom Skerritt) dredges up for a reporter a seemingly innocent detail: Hughes' failure to respond to a jury notice. That proves the first of far-uglier revelations, not about Hughes but about her world (and ours) and the people in her life.
Knocked by theater critics as shooting at too many targets, the play benefits from its TV makeover. By opening up the one-set play to include television studios and talk shows as well as the reporter-besieged Hughes home, the focus on a media run amok is sharpened.
The teleplay is also funny. There's a daytime show, "The Focus," with a grab bag of chatty female hosts that's a dead-on spoof of Barbara Walters and "The View" crew.
Complex themes including privacy and public service and the evolution of feminism are intact, along with the Tony Award-winning performance of Lynne Thigpen as Hughes' loyal friend who carries her own emotional burden.
Lahti's portrait of Lyssa Hughes, a woman battered by the world but steadfast in her beliefs, deserves awards of its own. Others in the solid cast include Jay Thomas, Mark Feuerstein and, in an eye-catching turn as opportunistic neo-feminist Quincy Quince, Blake Lindsley.
Capturing Thigpen on film was a major reason Wasserstein wanted to bring the play to television. Lahti, who starred in Wasserstein's Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Heidi Chronicles" but did not appear on stage in "American Daughter," lobbied for the TV role.
"I really felt for this character," Lahti said. "She's flawed but courageous. I think she's a compassionate and thoughtful public servant who's not allowed to do all that she's capable of because of the glass ceiling."
The play's inspiration came from the criticism that met Clinton nominees Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood over their child-care hiring practices, Wasserstein recounted in an interview.
"What was fascinating about 'Nannygate' was that if you had to pin something on the 'having-it-all' generation, or my generation of women, it was fascinating that you landed on child care and the nanny," she said.
Wasserstein also was struck by the fallout from Hillary Clinton's cookie-baking comment that some considered a slam against homemakers.
"I noticed for awhile that women in public office were all wearing pastel suits, and I thought no one I know wears those colors, just those women because we have to see how soft they are," Wasserstein said.
"I thought it was very peculiar. . . . Why can't a person just be a person?" That unfair burden falls on those outside the public arena, too, the playwright added: "I think people have opinions about women and how they live their lives."
Wasserstein's favorite scene comes at the end of the film, when Hughes has the chance to redeem herself in a public confessional -- a television interview.
Instead, the character proclaims, "The women of America should not concern themselves with my father's wives, my cooking or my mother."
Wasserstein hopes the film makes people more alert to political and social manipulation.
"I hope they think about what they're actually watching when they're watching someone running for public office . . . and try to listen when the Quincy Quinces come on and have an opinion about everything. Is it about their own careers, or are they saying something of value?"
Wasserstein has new reason to reflect on the state of the world: daughter Lucy Jane Wasserstein, born last fall. What kind of world would she like for her?
"A world that is much more tolerant, that recognizes character, what constitutes that . . . and that it's not the person who spins the best."