Review - Impressionism: Chagall's In Charge

If you're going to open your play with the two main characters discussing their preference of either muffins or coffee cake with their morning brew, your dialogue had better be sparkling.

It's not. In fact the biggest problem with Michael Jacobs' Impressionism is that its main characters can't seem to express themselves as cleverly as the author seems to believe they are. Pseudo-sophisticated urban shorthand abounds in this ninety minute pounding into the brain of the notion that, like an impressionist painting, life is so much clearer when observed from a distance.

Jacobs' first Broadway venture, the very funny and sadly short-lived 1978 comedy, Cheaters, was essentially a middle-brow stage sitcom. Since then his career has focused predominantly on creating and producing television sitcoms like "Boy Meets World," "My Two Dads" and the Scott Baio vehicle, "Charles in Charge" (for which he co-composed the insanely catchy theme song). Trying for something deeper in this, his second Broadway outing, the unfortunate new tenant of the Schoenfeld is a lot of fuzzy ideas contained in a beautifully designed, poorly paced production with accomplished, high-quality stage actors doing as good a job as can be expected under the circumstances.

The breakfast banterers in question are photographer Thomas (Jeremy Irons) and art gallery owner Katharine (Joan Allen). Katherine is one of those attractive, smart and successful neurotic messes that generally roam about romantic comedies guarding their hearts against terribly attractive, well-spoken but annoyingly erudite baggage carriers like Thomas; her self-appointed, presumably unpaid assistant who wandered into the gallery two years ago and decided to make himself a fixture.

Aside from the Chagall that she keeps removing from view every time Thomas insists on displaying it, Katharine has an emotional connection to each piece that keeps her from selling the darn things. (How the two manage to pay the rent, not to mention drum up the cash for their breakfast treats, is never explained.) A Mary Cassatt portrait of a mother and daughter sparks memories, shown in a flashback, of watching her dad (played by Irons) leave her mother (Allen). The nude woman in a Modigliani takes her back to an embarrassing time when she was ready to disrobe for a (fictional) painter (Irons again) in his Soho loft. Thomas' own photograph of a young boy in Tanzania inspires a scene where we see the child's significance in his life and the tragedy that has made him give up photography since. Far from illuminating, the scenes are underwritten and obvious.

Marsha Mason livens up the night a bit as a wealthy and gregarious customer and Andre De Shields brings understated elegance to his scene as the bakery owner who offers his romantic interpretation of a painting Katherine has grown too cynical to see. Michael T. Weiss, Margarita Levieva and Aaron Lazar have little of interest to work with in their supporting roles.

Scenes frequently crawl under Jack O'Brien's direction, particularly the ones where Irons takes numerous meaningful pauses. But the visuals are quite lovely as Elaine J. McCarthy's scrim projections allow us to see enlarged versions of each painting as well as the faces of the actors as they look directly at them. Between scenes there are more paintings fading on and off the scrim curtain, accompanied by Bob James' piano music; the kind of upbeat free-form incidentals reminiscent of the background music used for Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. And while those moments are allowed to go on for far too long, they do, at first, make a very nice impression.

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons; Bottom: Marsha Mason

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