There is not any dubiousness as to what the fresh play games “Left on Tenth,” which opened on the James Earl Jones Theatre Wednesday evening, desires to be: A romantic, humorous and harrowing story of a lady’s rebirth.
Theater evaluation
LEFT ON TENTH
One future and 40 mins, without a interlude. On the James Earl Jones Theatre, 130 West forty eighth Side road.
But, later visual Delia Ephron’s Broadway display starring Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher, other descriptors soar to thoughts: Sappy, gradual and awkward.
That Ephron, who co-wrote rom-coms comparable to “You’ve Got Mail” and “Hanging Up” together with her past due sister Nora, primarily based this cliche-ridden slog at the dramatic highs and lows of her personal future provides some other layer of discomfort.
I felt sinister — wretched, in point of fact — that I disliked the dramedy about this actual individual’s depression, infection and eventual triumph up to I did. However the mangled pitch, laughless jokes and emotional fakery are not possible to seem past.
The air of mystery of the 2 leads can’t save cardboard discussion. Noble intentions form the pacing deny much less clunky. Even the cuteness of its two actual canine fails to pump future right into a display that’s ostensibly about residing.
Ephron’s play games starts with a relatable situation. Delia (Margulies) is on conserve with Verizon looking to recovery her downed web connection.
She lives on West tenth Side road in Greenwich Village, and her condominium is depicted via all set clothier Beowulf Boritt as a wall of elevated, cream-colored bookshelves. The comfortable-elegant vibe, correctly, is that of a Nancy Meyers area.
The seriousness turns up when Delia unearths why the internet is at the fritz: She simply canceled the landline of her past due husband, Jerry, and Verizon went overboard. He died six months in the past later 33 years of marriage. She’s been misplaced with out him.
As writers have a tendency to do when their lives are thrown into chaos, Delia takes to her keyboard.
She pens a comic book essay about her telephone foibles within the newspaper, and shortly, a reader reaches out via e mail: Peter (Gallagher), a California psychiatrist, who claims he went on a number of dates together with her when she used to be 18. He occurs to be a Jungian, a agreement that’s stated a ways too again and again on this display.
Their candy back-and-forth — Margulies, a genial actress, and Gallagher take a seat at his and her desks for slightly a future — turns right into a long-distance courting.
“I began to believe I was falling into my own romantic comedy,” Delia says in probably the most play games’s numerous moments of distancing, stakes-obliterating narration.
She’s been obsessive about love since she first watched “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” as a child.
A dopey transition dance — director Susan Stroman’s calling card, comparable to it’s — that’s intended to summon that 1954 film musical must were axed instantly.
Alas, too many needy alternatives were left in “Tenth.”
Casting Gallagher used to be probably the most few robust ones. His heat presence and resonant resonance upload ranges to Peter that surely aren’t discoverable within the hokey writing. His personality, save for be crazy for crimson pepper flakes, is mechanically highest.
And so is Delia’s fresh future. However her happiness is shattered when she’s recognized with leukemia, the similar most cancers that killed her sister.
Peter sticks via his lady because the display starkly relocates from desks and books to a sterile medical institution room, and the connection intensifies future she battles the weakness for months.
The construction of the chemotherapy scenes — montages of worsening and development — is wonky. The target market must be crying buckets future Delia and Peter endure, however I’ve had extra affecting teach commutes.
It’s now not for inadequency of attempting. An actual stumper comes when the subconscious affected person’s blood-oxygen ranges begin to reduce, and doting Peter encourages her to push thru it because the teary tune “Ship in a Bottle” performs.
Margulies is recreation and doesn’t conserve again as Delia deteriorates and lashes out. However, the sequences are troubled via the similar artificiality shared via all of the manufacturing.
A part of the condition is that Stroman sticks to her sympathy zone and has directed “Left on Tenth” adore it’s a musical. She’s a ways too inquisitive about transitions, including kitschy thrives and converting wigs than in truth portraying people.
Delia’s attempt, subsequently, is choreographed — now not embodied or felt.
Alternative than Delia, each and every personality is textureless and dull. Peter Francis James and Kate MacCluggage play games a Rolodex of society in her future: a British easiest good friend in Wales, a Chai-tea-latte kind in Northern California, docs, nurses, waiters and extra.
MacCluggage places on a distinct bright wig for just about each and every individual — it’s almost “Rainbow High” from “Evita” with hairpieces — and is going to the city at the accents (English, Slavic, Valley Woman). However substantively each and every position is strictly the similar.
They’re units, now not society.
Ephron’s bio-play may’ve grew to become out higher had she passed her memoir to another, much less treasured essayist with a greater grab of what works onstage. Because it stands, what’s on the Jones at the moment is a wannabe rom-com that delivers neither rom nor com.
