‘IMPRESSIONISM,” a new Broadway play about the healing power of Art, is in desperate need of the heal ing power of Cutting.
Preview audiences have been deserting the two-hour-plus production at intermission. You can see them wandering around Shubert Alley baffled by a first act that even people working on the show concede is “pretty much incomprehensible,” says one.
Investors in the show, which stars Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons, were so concerned about the lackluster response that they fired off a blizzard of notes and comments to lead producer Bill Haber and director Jack O’Brien. Haber responded in an e-mail, which naturally was leaked to The Post.
“We have been sincerely attentive to both your notes to us and the comments from many of the friends you have brought to the show,” he wrote.
“Often such responses are simply lip service and have no conclusions, but on this very intelligent and remarkable play, every remark from you has been heard strongly.”
Haber told the investors that “Impressionism” will be whacked to one act without an intermission (that’s one way of eliminating the mass exodus!), and that confusing sections created by what he calls “flashback moments” will be trimmed and clarified.
He concluded: “Keep those cards and letter coming which mean a great deal to Jack O’Brien and to me.”
(I’m going later this week, and I’ll be sure to send mine along as well, Bill.)
Reconfiguring a two-act play into a one-act play in previews on Broadway is a radical move. It requires opening night be pushed back two weeks, to March 24.
A veteran producer not involved in the show estimates that the postponement could cost an additional $100,000.
“It’s not that much money,” the producer says. “But the postponement is a very public admission that something’s wrong.”
Sources say O’Brien and the playwright, Michael Jacobs, were caught off guard.
“They thought the two acts were necessary to tell the story – until they saw it in front of the audience,” a source says.
O’Brien is one of Broadway’s most sought-after directors, having staged such hits as “Hairspray,” “The Full Monty” and “The Invention of Love.” But he’s had a few clunkers, notably Nora Ephron‘s “Imaginary Friends,” which should have been chopped down to a closing notice.
“He thought everything was all right with that and didn’t do very much in previews,” one person says. “I think he’s determined not to make the same mistake with ‘Impressionism.’ ”
Jacobs, the playwright, is hardly an old theater hand. He’s had one play produced on Broadway – “Cheaters,” which ran 33 performances in 1978.
He’s spent most of his career in television, which means he can write fast. But fast isn’t the same as good, and whether he can save “Impressionism” by March 24 is very much in doubt.
He should start by jettisoning the gimmick of having Allen and Irons play several different characters. Allen, for instance, plays an art dealer, the art dealer’s mother and a medical technician in Africa.
(Maybe she could also slip in Heidi from “The Heidi Chronicles.” At least that play was a hit.)
The tripling of roles is so confusing that the playbill carries inserts explaining who the characters are in each scene.
“We call those ‘scene breakdowns,’ ” one source says.
That’s diplomatic code for Cliffs Notes.