Many older readers will remember the dramatic 1974 abduction of the Hearst newspaper heiress from her Berkeley apartment by members of the revolutionary Symbionese Liberation Army; her subsequent apotheosis as Tania, glimpsed holding an automatic rifle by a surveillance camera during a bank robbery; her yearlong disappearance underground in the wake of a massive police assault on an S.L.A. bungalow that left six of the group dead; her arrest in San Francisco and subsequent trial, during which her attorney F. Lee Bailey claimed she had acted under duress; her seven-year prison sentence, commuted after 22 months by President Jimmy Carter. Many older readers will also remember the feel of those days, the starkness of the societal polarization and the extraordinary collisions -- often in the same individual -- of the most ardent idealism and abject cynicism. Psychologically centered though it is on one small group, ''American Woman'' brings back some of the more broadly dispersed intensity of that period.

Older readers? OLDER READERS!?! OLDER READERS!!!!

As hard as it is to swallow, I guess I'm now right up there with the septagenarians and octogenarians, an "older reader."

(These moments also come to me in rehearsal when I realize that not only am I old enough to be the father of my production assistant, but that I've been stage managing longer than my assistant stage manager has been alive.

Clearly, I'm overdue for a mid-life crisis. Unfortunately, I can't afford to buy a sports car, and I'm not interested in having an affair, so I suppose I'll have to settle for growing old and senile gracefully.)