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Author: Pincus-Roth, Zachary

NEW YORK CITY

"It has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton," Insists Sarah Schulman, the writer of Manic Flight Reaction, premiering through Nov. 13 at Playwrights Horizons in New York City. "it didn't even cross my mind."

It's all too easy to make such a juicy connection, but that's the scandalmongering media age we live in, an age that the play's protagonist, Marge--a middle-aged hippie and the other half of the lesbian affair--finds bewildering. After moving from the East Village to suburban Illinois, Marge copes with a conniving gossip journalist, a daughter who thinks her mother's a relic and a Todd Haynes-directed movie about her own long-dead mother, who committed suicide by flying a plane into the sea.

At its core, Schulman says, the play is mother-daughter comedy--one in which heart-to-hearts include talk of drug use and lesbian sex. "There's a lot of content and perspectives that's really new for audiences," Schulman says, "but I'm hoping that the traditional format and the traditional archetypes will help them accept that material."

Like Marge, the 47-year-old Schulman is a veteran East Village activist, and the play is an attempt to help correct "the lack of lesbian presence in the American repertoire," says. But Schulman balances her idealism with self-deprecating humor, as the play takes satirical swipes not only at Hollywood and Republicans but the downtown mystique itself. Schulman describes Marge as a hapless, "Woody Allen" version of herself; and a radio interview with the filmmaker Haynes--voiced by Haynes himself, the good sport--makes him sound like an opportunistic blowhard.

Politics ultimately plays second fiddle to family matters, but Clinton-philes shouldn't fret--Marge does have a threesome with Bill.

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By Zachary Pincus-Roth