Heidi Holland (Kristianne Kurner) got in on the ground floor of the women’s movement in the ’70s, but that didn’t protect her from a droopy social life and an eventual admission that her life was as empty as those she imagines her unliberated sisters’ to have been.

New Village Arts Theatre dusts off Wendy Wasserstein’s somewhat musty 1989 Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heidi Chronicles for a run through

Sunday, April 25, directed by Amanda Sitton.

Beginning with the all-too-familiar agony of a high-school dance in 1968, The Heidi Chronicles follows Heidi and her buddy Susan Johnston (Jacque Wilke) through the end of the ’80s “me decade,” by which time Dr. Holland is an authority on art history, specifically women in art history. Along the way are visits to a women’s consciousness-raising group, talk of Esalen and bra burning and having it all.

Oh, and men. Heidi never seems to find the right guy, but she does bounce between two types: Scoop Rosenbaum (John DeCarlo), on-again-off-again lover and male chauvinist par excellence (and he has the effrontery to marry someone else), and Peter Patrone (Brian Mackey), cute, sweet and gay.

Sitton has added a nice touch: she’s chosen to put talented local musician Linda Libby onstage to sing with guitar and keyboard the music of the times (Janis, the Beatles, Sam Cooke) specified in the script.

Kurner is effective as Heidi, though one does wonder why she seems so determined to be unhappy. Maybe it’s that dreary dress she wears through the decades.

Wilke is a stitch as sidekick Susan, who gets it better than Heidi does. Running as fast as she can to keep up with the times, Susan finally notes that “By now I’ve been so many people I don’t know who I am, and I don’t care. Blaming anything on being a woman is just passé.”

Mackey’s Peter is exactly right for the role – funny, sympathetic, committed to his pediatric practice and accepting of others.

DeCarlo’s Scoop is the kind of guy you love to hate – but can’t help enjoying a conversation (or, apparently, a roll in the hay) with. Kelly Iversen, Frances Regal and Sunny Smith play an assortment of characters well.

Tim Wallace’s minimalist set works well enough, and kudos to Brian Townsend for the projections on the back wall.

This play is best seen by those who weren’t there, to whom it may be a revelation. To old ladies like me who were, the best thing about it is Heidi’s sad realization at the end: “I don’t blame any of us. It’s just that I feel stranded. And I thought the whole point was that we wouldn’t feel stranded. I thought the point was that we were all in this together.”

The Heidi Chronicles plays through Sunday, April 25, at New Village Arts Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday at 3 and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 760-433-3245 or visit www.newvillagearts.org.

The Civil War serves as backdrop for a feuding modern pair in Kenny Finkle’s odd little play Alive and Well, in its co-world premiere through April 25 at the Old Globe’s White Theatre in collaboration with Virginia Stage Company.

Structured as a romantic comedy and aspiring to be in the mold of classic films like The African Queen and It Happened One Night, Finkle presents two endlessly bickering characters who ... well, you can guess, can’t you?

Here’s the plot setup, played out on a raised platform representing the map of central Virginia (but difficult to read from the seats): Freelance journalist Carla Keenan (Kelly McAndrew) has been hired to write about a reported ghostly “Lonesome Soldier” sometimes seen about halfway between Petersburg and Appomattox, where in April 1865 Gen. Lee signed the Confederate surrender.

Her guide will be Civil War re-enactor Zachariah Clemenson (James Knight), a cabbie by day, who does re-enactments “to feel alive.” He cries on very little provocation, says he’s seen the Lonesome Soldier and seems eager to get the story out.

Carla, a modern woman addicted to her Blackberry, smugly sees herself as “never wrong” and doesn’t believe that telling a good story necessitates wearing an itchy period costume or suffering all the discomforts of the time, including sleeping outside on the ground and downing hardtack snacks. But Zach insists, and that promised $2500 for the story wins out.

This is an odd couple, to say the least, and though these are enormously attractive actors – Knight in particular maintains an endearing down-home presence throughout – a romance strains credulity, even when they get lost and take refuge in an abandoned cabin as shelter from the driving rain, and Carla lets down her guard enough to reminisce about making S’mores as a kid.

In fact, the whole enterprise seems contrived, though the constant mutual snarking that ends in an amusing but pointless formal put-down contest does at least enliven the proceedings for a while.

Finkle’s play misses opportunities to make cogent points about blue states and red ones and disparities between Southern and Northern psyches by trying to make a comedy out of two people who really aren’t that funny.

It all seems pretty farb (re-enactorspeak for inauthentic).

Alive and Well plays through Sunday, April 25, at the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre. Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, call 619-234-5623 or visit www.theoldglobe.org.