Jack’s perspective on the success of the piece:

I think the show was a hit for several reasons. It was a show with an all woman cast, which was unusual at that time. Most plays featured men. I don't think a play with a cast of women had been done since THE EFFECT OF THE GAMMA RAYS ON THE MAN IN THE MOON MARIGOLDS, and before that maybe THE WOMEN. Producers and the movies did not trust that women could draw at the box office. Most plays about the 1960's were about the war in Vietnam and heavy dramas (STICKS AND BONES for example)…but I wrote a play about people who didn't care about the war. The play was controversial for several reasons. (It did not come off as a bright comedy at the time.) It was the height of the women's movement. The play was written by a man. The arguments in the play about women, abortion, war, civil rights were hot topics. Germaine Greer was on every one's minds. I wrote a sociological study about three women who were given the wrong set of values and goods for life. Cheerleaders and sorority girls went from being what women wanted to be, to something that was looked upon with scorn. By the second act of the play, the women are more or less sitting in their ivory tower while the world outside is falling apart. I was studying popularity and American myth in the play, but in my mind it was always a play about friendship. I was exactly the age of the three characters at the end of the play when I wrote the piece. I was examining my life and the values I had been given. I don't think the experience is any different for men than for women. A football player and a frat boy were in the same position as these women. I was looking at my world and the way I was raised. I had been popular and I had been in a fraternity. I went from being a frat boy to a hippie in the course of a couple of years. I marched on Washington, I fought going to the Army, I protested for civil rights…none of this I would have done when I entered college in 1964. I wanted to have fun and be in a fraternity. By 1968, I was changing radically. The USA was changing fast.

…The universal thread that made audiences in their teens and audiences in their sixties love it was the fact that it was about friendship. We have all had friends we have grown apart from. However, the cynical ending of the 1970's is not something I believe now. That is why I have written the new end for the musical. I know now, over 30 years later, that friendships do last. My best friends are still my best friends from high school and college. Forgiveness is essential.

However, the ending of the 1970's play was accurate for the time. It reflected the time the play was in. Remember the play opened in 1976 and the last act of the play is set in 1974. The issues were current. People went out of the show talking about it…they had laughed and cried, but they were also confused and angry. They were looking at themselves and their world…just as I was when I wrote it.

People took sides. If you were a Joanne, you were for her. If you were a Mary, you championed her…Joanne is the way were raised with traditional values, Mary is the rebellious side of us and Kathy is the voice of reason that begins to happen as we get older.

I think the lyrics that David has written are so true, but the ones that say what the play is about to me are at the end…"the people you need will always be there…someone might let you down, someone might disappear…they'll come shining through, deep inside of you in every breath you take…" Again, it is a journey.