Left on Tenth
Opening Night: October 23, 2024
Theater: James Earl Jones Theatre
Website: leftontenthbroadway.com
When she least expects it, Delia, beloved novelist and screenwriter of “You’ve Got Mail,” reconnects with a man from her past and falls into her own romantic comedy. What starts with an unlikely spark blossoms into a love story that seems to defy all odds in the face of life’s challenges. Left on Tenth tells the messy, beautiful true story of a woman discovering how to embrace the unpredictable and open her heart again.
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October 23, 2024
The play needs to take the audience by the hand and lead it to and through the most nightmarish depths of Delia’s illness, when she is in the hospital, begging to die. Instead it abruptly drops us there and expects us to switch from comedy mode to drama.
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October 23, 2024
Left on Tenth is a slight endeavor – slighter, probably, than a cancer odyssey has any right to be – and certainly falls short of better Ephron Sister efforts. Even so, there can be only one response to it, and that’s well wishes for all.
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October 21, 2024
Is there anything less dramatic on stage than people sending each other email messages?
READ THE REVIEWOctober 23, 2024
But the play, based on Ephron’s bestselling memoir, may have a greater impact on the page than the stage. And while it would make a charming rom-com film, it doesn’t fully translate to theatre.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 23, 2024
But despite its very best intentions, the play is frustratingly surface level, rarely delving beyond Hallmark card sentiments about taking the good with the bad. At 100 minutes, the show hastily whips through a life’s worth of milestones and minutiae, told mostly through verbose exposition delivered directly to the audience.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 23, 2024
Ephron’s experience is powerful and affecting, but some stories simply don’t translate from the page to the stage.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 23, 2024
Director Susan Stroman works tirelessly to infuse the static proceedings, which too often feel like an audiobook, with theatricality. But she tries too hard, embellishing scene transitions with musical and dancing interludes that feel jarringly out-of-place.
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October 23, 2024
Ephron’s bio-play might’ve turned out better had she handed her memoir to a different, less precious writer with a better grasp of what works onstage. As it stands, what’s at the Jones right now is a wannabe rom-com that delivers neither rom nor com.
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October 23, 2024
And while both of these actors are honest, vulnerable and appealing — no faint praise — they are not delivering bravura stage performances. I’d argue such zig-zaggingly internal material does not really allow for such performances anyway.
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October 23, 2024
Directed by Susan Stroman, Left in Tenth has the energy and the color scheme of a drugstore greeting card: This is a cheap-looking production, from Beowulf Boritt’s jankily angled set to Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s blotchy projections and the least realistic prop drinks you’ll ever see.
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