Delia Ephron’s memoir “Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life” is a moving, heartbreaking account of the author’s reclaiming love and life after losing a beloved husband, finding a second amour, being diagnosed with leukemia and cancer, and dealing with endless phone prompts with Verizon. It’s funny, moving, and joyful. However, the material does not translate well from the page to the stage in Ephron’s theater adaptation now at the James Earl Jones. Perhaps it would have worked better on film since many of the scenes are so brief, some lasting only a few seconds. Though the subject matter is shattering, given that it really happened, the evening is strangely unmoving because Ephron’s script and Susan Stroman’s rapid-paced direction move so quickly we barely have time to register any reaction to the stage Ephron’s travails. The surface-oriented performances by top-billed Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher don’t help. They both look good but fail to delve deeply into their roles. It’s like a Reader’s Digest version of the book.
The title refers to Ephron’s Greenwich Village residence on Tenth Street, beautifully realized by set designer Beowulf Borritt’s book-lined abode which transforms to a number of settings and Jeanette Oi-Suk’s painterly projections of an idealized NYC. The play begins with writer and recent widow Delia (Margulies) explaining to the audience her frustrating struggles with Verizon which cut off her Internet access when it disconnected her late spouse’s landline. She writes a New York Times opinion piece on her conflict with the communications giant, which leads to her re-connecting with forgotten old beau Peter (Gallagher), a Jungian psychologist.
There’s lots of direct-address monologues, reading of emails, and many instances of the characters telling us what’s happening but very little showing of Delia coming back to life and the couple falling in love. The tone shifts from romantic comedy to stark drama as Delia’s diagnosis—frighteningly similar to that received by her late sister Nora—is revealed.
The only sequences that truly move the emotional needle occur when Delia is at her absolute lowest. Stroman finally slows the action down and Margulies is able to deliver a truly shattering sense of her character’s pain and desperation. From her hospital bed, Delia curses Peter and pleads with him to let her die. In a brilliant stroke of stagecraft, Stroman has a tear-inducing Barbara Cook ballad play as Peter struggles to up Delia’s oxygen levels, with her falling numbers projected on the back wall. Performances, direction, design, and music all come together to convey Delia’s life-and-death climb and Peter’s loving attention. Too bad this comes towards the end of the play’s one hour and forty minutes.
The admirable Peter Francis James and Kate MacCluggage are reduced to scene-shifters as multiple friends, servers, doctors, and nurses, wheeling on gurneys, placing and removing appetizers and desserts, providing exposition. The pair, listed in the Playbill as “Featured Actor and Actress” do manage to create flashes of credible individuals with the aid of Jeff Mahsie’s versatile costumes and Michael Buonincontro’s character-defining wig and hair design. James is moving as a gay neighbor who survived AIDS and MacCluggage has several moments of connection as several of Delia’s supportive girlfriends.
The dogs Nessa Rose and Charlie deserve mention for obeying commands and inspiring “awws” from the audience. The play similarly seeks to trigger Pavlovian responses of empathy, but fails to truly earn them with a quick, shallow summarizing of Ephron’s original.
