The Heidi Chronicles: Why a 1989 play about the exclusion of women is wholly relevant in 2016

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A revival of Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles really puts a male theatre critic in a pickle.

One of the themes of this Pultizer Prize-winning 1989 play is the exclusion of women from the history of art. Indeed, it kicks off with art historian Heidi Holland (Michelle Monteith) giving a lecture at Columbia University on some of the female artists celebrated in their time and then subsequently forgotten by cultural gatekeepers – Sofonisba Anguissola of the Italian Renaissance, Clara Peeters of the Dutch Golden Age, Lilly Martin Spencer in 19th-century America. Their paintings appear projected on a screen in director Gregory Prest's new production at Soulpepper – and later wrap the set like wallpaper, courtesy of Shannon Lea Doyle's video design.

Now here I am playing the role of cultural gatekeeper in the 21st century, supposed to provide an authoritative answer to the question: Is Wasserstein's play still relevant in 2016? But the very fact that I am in this position – and that men still hold the top theatre-critic positions at the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times, the major broadsheet newspapers in the American cities depicted in the play – already gives you the answer.

After the prologue, The Heidi Chronicles takes us back to meet our unlikely heroine at age 16, 14 years earlier, at a high school dance in Chicago in 1965. Heidi sits down to read a book while her friend Susan (Sarah Wilson) pursues a fellow who can twist and smoke at the same time. A caustic young man named Peter (Damien Atkins), who feels similarly out of place at the dance, approaches Heidi – and they form a friendship.

In the next scene, we jump to 1968 and the new Hampshire campaign office for Eugene McCarthy, the anti-war senator who challenged Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination for president. There, Heidi falls for the tricks of an arrogant new-left journalist named Scoop (Jordan Pettle), who is skilled in the art of picking up women by putting them down.

The Heidi Chronicles then gives us a panoramic view of the lives of Heidi, Susan, Peter and Scoop until they turn 40 in 1989, taking us on a fairly familiar baby-boomer trajectory from idealism in the 1960s to consumerism in the 1980s – the main focus being on women's purported advancement in work and relationships.

At times, Wasserstein's play can come across as a feminist Forrest Gump – with scenes set on the day that Nixon resigned or Lennon died. Music referenced in the script or inserted into Prest's production gallops from Betty Everett (The Shoop Shoop Song) to Aretha Franklin to Janis Joplin.

With the characters all highly educated and upper-middle-class, the play could also also be regarded as a kind of Forest Hill Gump, too. All the name-dropping of colleges, publishers and It restaurants grows tiresome – even if Wasserstein is embedding a critique of her class and bourgeois feminism within it.

Heidi is a tough protagonist to get a handle on, not always saying much, frequently detached. Tellingly, she talks of the role of the art historian as "a highly informed spectator." At a low point, Heidi also describes herself as feeling both "worthless" and "superior," and in her performance, Monteith is better at capturing the former than the latter. I wasn't completely convinced by her scholarly demeanour or class-based standoffishness, though she makes Heidi's insecurities palpable.

Wilson takes a primarily comedic approach to Susan, and is particularly enjoyable in her 1980s power-suit phase. Likewise, Atkins really comes into the part of Peter after he comes out and is confronted by the AIDS crisis. And Pettle convincingly pulls off the charisma of an entertainingly unredeemable character. (Among the supporting cast, Laura Condlln particularly stands out, rotating through a group of funky bit parts.)

Wasserstein's play is definitely episodic and anti-climactic, but there's an implicit critique in the play's structure of, well, traditional dramatic structure – that a play should be like the male sexual experience, building to a climax followed by a rapid denouement. Its ebb-and-flow form is feminist itself – and its argument for the "highly informed spectator" as hero remains provocative.

The audience on opening night was on board – reacting most strongly to a scene where Heidi appears on a television talk show and is constantly interrupted by both the insufferable Scoop and the hitherto loveable Peter. And that seems like a good enough place for this man to shut up.

Follow my favourite female critics on Twitter: @thatkatetaylor, @emilynussbaum, @susannahclapp