By Monty Arnold
16 Jul 2009

If these gals were empty vessels, so was he as a freshman. "I wanted to be a business major, then completely rebelled and went into theatre and became a hippie — all this while the Vietnam War was at its height. Then, Martin Luther King came to the campus and spoke and totally changed my life. I think what it was, was that I didn't have a social conscience — which these girls don't. They didn't know what was going on in the world. They didn't care. I started out like them but changed and marched on Washington and all that. I think those years were really important in the country.

"I always felt this was a sociological study of women who were handed the wrong game plan for life. If you bought into that sorority girl/Miss America mentality — especially in the late '60s and '70s — you found yourself isolated. Sororities at SMU became a joke. People were laughing at them. But it all came back, full-circle, later.

"When the play opened, we were in the cynical '70s and what was happening on stage was current. I didn't understand what long friendships are about, but when I started working on this musical, I realized the ending I had in the '70s I didn't believe anymore, so I wrote a fourth scene that brought them up to age 40.

"I think it's a play, now, about friendship and forgiveness. You may not talk to old friends all the time, but when you do see each other, you pick up right where you left off. That comes from a built-in history of what you went through together. I now believe friendships can weather storms. It's a different ending. I think they're wiser, they've lived longer, and they've learned how to forgive themselves and each other."

Proof of his new philosophy is that the members of the first Vanities cast are still his friends: Kathy Bates (Joanne) found "Misery" and the Oscar; Susan Merson (Mary) and Jane Galloway (Kathy) still act as well, but Merson now writes books and one-person shows, and Galloway is the minister of a church in Long Beach.

Sarah Stiles, Lauren Kennedy and Anneliese van der Pol now head the Callow Class.

Judith Ivey was the obvious choice to direct them for reasons unrelated to her two Tonys for acting. "I thought it was really important to have a woman director — someone from Texas — and also someone who had lived through that time," Heifner says. Plus, there's a PS: "She was a cheerleader and can still do a few of the yells."