There’s no doubt what “Left on Tenth,” the new play that opened Wednesday night at the James Earl Jones Theatre, wants to be: a romantic, funny and painful story of one woman’s rebirth.
Still, after seeing Delia Ephron’s Broadway show starring Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher, different descriptors come to mind: sad, dull and awkward.
Efron, who co-wrote romantic comedies like “You’ve Got Mail” and “Hanging Up” with her late sister Nora, based this well-worn slogan on the dramatic ups and downs of her own life, which adds another layer. Discomfort.
I felt bad – terrible, in fact – that I disliked this drama about this real person’s heartbreak, illness, and eventual triumph as much as I did. But it’s impossible to see beyond the distorted accents, corny jokes, and emotional posturing.
The charisma of both the leads can’t save the cardboard dialogue. Good intentions don’t make the dynamic any less chaotic. Even the cuteness of its two real dogs fails to enliven a show that’s all about living ostensibly.
Ephron’s play begins with a relatable scenario. Delia (Margulies) is stuck at Verizon trying to fix a downed Internet connection.
She lives on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, and her apartment is characterized by a wall of tall, cream-colored bookshelves by set designer Beowulf Boritt. The cozy-cute ambiance is, appropriately, like Nancy Meyers’s home.
The seriousness increases when Delia explains why Webb is on the fritz: She canceled her late husband, Jerry’s landline, and Verizon went overboard. She died six months ago after 33 years of marriage. She is lost without him.
As writers do when their lives are in turmoil, Delia turns to her keyboard.
She writes a humorous essay in the newspaper about her phone malfunctioning, and soon, a reader reaches out by email: California psychiatrist Peter (Gallagher), who claims to have been with her when she was 18. Went on many dates together. Jungian, a word that gets said a lot in this show.
Their sweet back-and-forth – Margulies, a talented actress, and Gallagher sits at her desk for long periods of time – turns into a long-distance relationship.
“I began to believe I was trapped in my own romantic comedy,” Delia says in one of the play’s countless moments of distancing, stakes-busting description.
She has been crazy about love since she watched “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” for the first time in her childhood.
A dopey transition dance – director Suzanne Stroman’s calling card, as it is – meant that the 1954 film musical should have been promptly discarded.
Sadly, “The Tenth” leaves a lot of bad choices.
Gallagher’s casting was one of the few strong ones. His warm presence and resonant voice add a level of flair to Peter that certainly isn’t evident in Hokey’s writing. His character is robotically perfect, except for his obsession with red pepper flakes.
And so is Delia’s new life. But her happiness is shattered when she is diagnosed with leukemia, the same cancer that took her sister’s life.
As the show shifts from desks and books to a sterile hospital room, Peter sticks by his girl, and the relationship grows stronger as she battles the illness for months.
The structure of chemotherapy sequences – assessing worsening and improvement – is bizarre. The audience should have cried when Delia and Peter suffered, but train journeys have suffered more because of me.
It’s not for lack of trying. A real stumper comes when the unconscious patient’s blood-oxygen levels begin to drop, and the loving Peter encourages her to push through it as the tearful song “Ship in a Bottle” plays.
Margulies is game and doesn’t back down when Delia’s condition worsens and he passes out. Nonetheless, the sequences suffer from the same artificiality shared by the entire production.
Part of the problem is that Stroman sticks to his comfort zone and has directed “Left on Tenth” as if it were a musical. He’s much more concerned with making changes, adding kitsch flourishes and changing wigs, than honestly portraying human beings.
Therefore, Delia’s struggle is choreographed – not embodied or felt.
Apart from Delia, every character is unoriginal and uninteresting. Peter Francis James and Kate McCluggage play a Rolodex of people in her life: a British best friend in Wales, a tea-tea-latte type in Northern California, doctors, nurses, waiters, and more.
McCluggage puts on a different shiny wig for almost every person — it’s practically “Evita” from “Rainbow High” with hairpieces — and goes to town on the accents (English, Slavic, Valley Girl). But essentially every role is exactly the same.
They’re tools, not people.
Ephron’s bio-play might have been better if she had handed her memoir to a different, less valuable writer who had a better understanding of what works on stage. As it stands, what we have in Jones right now is a wannabe rom-com that offers neither rom nor com.
