(Laura Collins-Hughes’s article appeared in The New York Times, 3/3 via Pam Green.)
Was it a delayed reaction to the Reagan era, eight years of watching a cowboy president ride horses on his California ranch? Something, anyway, made the early 1990s an exceptionally rich time for unconventional westerns.
Among them were Larry McMurtry’s novel “Buffalo Girls,” Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning “Unforgiven” — and Beth Henley’s play “Abundance,” a small tragedy in a comic key about a pair of mail-order brides chasing survival, excitement and maybe even happiness in the Wyoming Territory.