Interview: Jack Heifner Looks Back on 47 Years of Vanities

Jack Heifner has seen it all when it comes to Vanities. What started as a 12-performance workshop in 1975 became one of the longest-running off-Broadway shows at that time and an international hit. Decades later, with composer David Kirshenbaum, Heifner took the next step and turned Vanities into a musical. That, too, became a worldwide hit. Still, the work is never done, and Heifner and Kirshenbaum have spent the last several years finessing their song-filled adaptation of this three-hander about friendship, and now Vanities — The Musical, is receiving its first Manhattan revival courtesy of the York Theatre Company. It’s not often that someone can say that one thing changed their life, but for Heifner, it’s true. Here, he discusses the play that has followed him for nearly 50 years.

Can you please talk about the origin of Vanities as a play? Where did it come from?
My first play Casserole was done at Playwrights Horizons in 1975 and, because of that very happy experience, I wrote Vanities to be a co-production of Playwrights and the Lion Theatre Company, where I was a member. The Lion and Playwrights, at that time, were sharing a space on 42nd Street. I wrote the play in two days for three actresses at the Lion—Kathy Bates, Jane Galloway, and Susan Merson. We did a 12-performance workshop of the play in December 1975 and the play moved to off-Broadway on March 22, 1976. Both of those productions were directed by Garland Wright. Garland, Kathy, and I had gone to college together. The play was a hit, running a total of 1785 performances, and by the end of 1976 there were productions opening all over the United States. Foreign productions began to happen after that. Overall, it was an enormous surprise but certainly captured the spirit of off-Broadway at the time, where a 12 performances workshop could go on to the one of the most produced plays in the world.

The idea came from my own life, from examining growing up and changing and the time I was living in. I purposely wrote the play about women because there were so few plays about women at the time. Vanities opened shortly before Wendy Wasserstein, Beth Henley, Marsha Norman, and other women writers were being presented in New York. I was told by producers that you couldn’t put three women on stage and sell any tickets. I decided to prove to them wrong.

I also was following the timeline of the women’s movement in the play. In the second scene, they talk about the birth control pill, which had just been introduced. In the third scene, Roe v. Wade had just become law. Women in the audience were on different sides of the debate about women’s rights. People forget that the play was controversial when it opened. It was a comedy, but it was poking fun at popularity and the lack of value in some American lives. The musical does the same thing. I was never saying “be like these women.” I was saying the opposite.

Also, all three characters in the play are one person—me! I was examining what my parents taught me in small town Texas, what being a rebel was like once I was in college and then moved to New York, and the voice of some sort of reason that entered my life when I was in my late 20s. The 1960s and 70s were a time of big changes in the United States. I went from a small-town kid to a college frat boy, to a hippie, to a protestor, to someone experimenting in life as I was essentially trying to find my place in the world. When I wrote the play I was asking “who am I?” The success of the play gave me the answer, I am a writer.

Whose idea was it to musicalize it? If it wasn’t yours, what was your reaction? (And if you weren’t keen on the idea, what made you change your mind?)
Several composers and directors had approached me, but I wasn’t sure that musicalizing the play would add much to it. I didn’t want it to become a high school musical. David wanted to write a couple of songs for me to hear and, when I heard what he had done, I was suddenly excited about the idea. He captured the time periods and what I was saying in the play. It was also decided to add a fourth scene to the musical. When I was in my 20 and wrote the original play, I was cynical. When David and I started writing the musical in 2005, I realized that the older I became the more I realized that forgiveness is important. The last scene in the musical is about moving on and forgiving others and ourselves.

The first New York run of the musical was at 2nd Stage. Did that production capture what you and David Kirschenbaum were hoping? What are the changes that you’ve made in the years since, which are being NYC premiered in the York production?
It was a good production, but I felt we weren’t at the end of the journey. The chance to work on the musical in Seattle was a time when we went back to work with David Armstrong, who directed that production. We rewrote the book, added new songs and a new framing device, and I think we felt better about what we’d done. Musicals take a long time because of the collaboration involved. We had done productions in Palo Alto, Pasadena, and New York prior to Seattle. David and I felt we still had work to do. The production that followed in London was brilliant. We felt at last we got the show right. We are still changing small things, but overall, the show is finished. That is unless there’s a sequel. We laughingly talk about Kathy, Mary, and Joanne in a retirement home together.

Vanities is a property from so long ago now. What does it mean to you that it’s still being done in all of its various forms?
It has certainly been a blessing in my life. It has allowed me to write other works for the stage and other mediums, and it also opened the door for me to become a teacher. I truly love my students and the creative process. I love all aspects of the theater. I have had a wonderful life thanks to Vanities and its success for 47 years. The play is about friendship. It has never been about anything else and that is what people relate to in the play. There are still productions of the play every night somewhere and the musical was recently done in Sweden and in Mexico. The play has been done with men, women, non-binary people, drag performers, all races, in many languages, and still it goes on and on. What a wonderful adventure it has been.