ABSTRACT
Leading us into deeper contortions of identity, Wasserstein would have Psyche’s sisters, themselves meddling characters in the original myth, now play siblings named Ego and Id.2 Three daughters of a father, once a psychiatrist and now a shop owner, are at once parts of a family and parts of a single self; they embody the options of settling for superficial success, of using boredom to fuel jealousy and distrust, and of encouraging Psyche to stab her loving husband with a fish fork. The core of Wasserstein’s depiction of the difficulties of the moral life, of course, lies within the desires and doubts of Psyche herself. Hounded by beauty which is at once her greatest gift and her curse, she is unable to trust the lover/husband whom she has not seen with her eyes but in whose attentions she revels. She betrays him by looking, only to see the beauty which she-of all people-should have already known by other means. She moves on to betray Venus by opening a bottle of anti-aging cream for herself, again forgetting far more potent sources of beauty than skin or youth.
