Review: Impressionism

Play Fails to Make a Good Impression

By Lauren Yarger
Imagine a couple you’ve just met hasn’t made a great impression. He’s pompous, she’s uptight and they both seem to be spoiled rich people who have nothing better to do than sit around being discontent. Suddenly, he sets up a projection screen and starts showing slides of a trip he took and she whips out a family photo album. A few far more interesting acquaintances of the couple stop in, but they don’t stay long enough for you to get to know them or offer an escape and you’re stuck looking at your watch wondering whether you’ll make it through 90 minutes.

Congratulations, you have just experienced Michael Jacobs’ play Impressionism, wasting the fine acting talents of Jeremy Irons, Joan Allen and Marsha Mason directed by Jack O’Brien at the Schoenfeld Theater on Broadway.

Katharine Keenan (Allen) owns a fine art gallery where Impressionist works are displayed. A photograph of a young boy in Africa taken by her employee, Thomas Buckle (Irons), also has a place on the wall, but he has vowed never to snap another shot until he sees something of “real joy.” Their days are filled with a light banter as Thomas shares endless stories about coffee (believe me, I didn’t need to know where those coffee beans come from), and Katharine gets really excited about her favorite muffins at the bakeshop on Tuesdays.

Occasionally a client comes in: Julia Davidson (Mason) wants a Cassat painting of a mother and child for her daughter who is getting married; Douglas Finch (Michael T. Weiss) has commissioned a nude for Katharine to sell; a young engaged couple (Aaron Lazar and Margarita Levieva) wants a painting of an elderly couple on a park bench as the first purchase for their new home.

Katharine refuses to sell the art, however, (she must have a private trust fund to support the gallery, Thomas’ salary and costume designer Catherine Zuber’s chic business suits), because they evoke memories for her. The Cassat reminds her of when she was 6 when her father walked out on her and her mother. The memory is recounted in a flashback with Hadley Delany playing the young Katharine and Irons and Allen playing the parents. All of the memories connected with the paintings are told with the same technique: an awkward attempt to freeze the action while set pieces (Scott Pask, design) and projections of paintings on a scrim and in frames (Elaine J. McCarthy, design) along with recorded music by Bob James are introduced to tell us we’re taking a trip down memory lane. In case we don’t get it, a script message telling us that this is a memory of Katharine at age 6, etc., is projected on the scrim as well.

The nude triggers a memory of Katharine at age 30, falling in love with a painter who wants her to pose for him. She realizes she’s been led on by the artist (played by Irons) when his mistress (Levieva) shows up, followed by his wife (Mason). The park bench painting, it turns out, is his work.

Meanwhile, Thomas’s photograph triggers a scene change to Tanzania, Africa where a kind and joyful villager, Chiambuane (Andre De Shields) poses for Thomas' photos. Mason has a few lines as a doctor treating a terminally ill young boy (the one in the photo) whom Thomas wants to bring home. Why Thomas is unable or willing to help any of the other children in Africa when the one featured in the photo dies, we don’t know.

Will Katharine and Thomas be able to step back from their memories, squint at each other and see each other in a different light? Is life impressionism or realism? The reality here is that the minor characters are much more interesting. Mason lights up the stage for the brief moments she’s there, like a splash of color stroked across a white canvass. DeSields brings to life Chiambuane and, in a second role, the elderly baker of Katharine’s coveted muffins, but they aren't around long enough to develop. Even Lazar’s brief stint as the groom-to-be stirs more interest than the main characters.

The opening of Impressionism was postponed a week for extensive rewrites and restructuring. It still doesn’t work. The choice of another play to showcase the talents of Irons, Allen, Mason and the rest, would have made a better impression.

Impressionism, originally scheduled to run through July 5 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W. 45th St., New York, will close May 10. For tickets, call (212) 239-6200, (800) 432-7250 or visit http://www.impressionismtheplay.com/.

Christians might also like to know:
• Many of the paintings are of nude women