[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]
Tom Reilly (as Thomas Buckle) and Mary Ann Rodgers (as Katharine Keenan) flesh out a flashback in “Impressionism.” Photo by Robin Jackson.
What might you get if you’d locked Noël Coward and Neil Simon in a room with Margaret Mead after they’d toured Tanzania?
A witty comedy tinged with a hint of sadness.
“Impressionism,” actually written by Michael Jacobs, is embedded at The Barn in the Marin Art & Garden Center in Ross, where I watched standoffish New York City art gallery owner Katharine Keenan (played by Mary Ann Rodgers) and burned out photojournalist Thomas Buckle (Tom Reilly) take eight scenes and 80 minutes to become whole.
But their journey often amused me.
Even though Katherine couldn’t bring herself to sell the gallery’s paintings, and Thomas couldn’t let himself snap pictures.
Even though each permanently hid out in the gallery because of life’s wounds — hers from a series of failed relationships, his from seeing too much of the world’s underbelly.
Director Billie Cox, fastidiously peeling back the pair of human onions, nimbly helped me learn who they were by utilizing flashbacks that shifted not only time but place.
And by brilliantly using “invisible” paintings.
The two lead actors give top-drawer performances, surely not equal to those of Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen in the play’s 2009 Broadway debut but way beyond acceptable for community theater.
Much of the play’s dialogue is sharp.
Katherine snarkily revealed a warped world-view by exclaiming that men, whom she refers to as “you people,” exist only “to knock me over.”
More seriously, she ruled about art that “getting it accurate isn’t as important as getting somebody to feel something.”
Thomas, correspondingly, described the self-imposed constraints on his photographic art this way: “I won’t take pictures of anything that [won’t elicit] true joy.”
And the two adversary-friends playfully debated whether life is Impressionism or Realism.
Nobody wins.
But nobody loses either.
Before the opening night performance Cox had primed me and other critics by explaining that the show may only contain “one-act but it’s about the second act of our lives.”
The main conceit of “Impressionism” is that Katharine has employed Thomas for two years and — shades of Scheherazade — he regularly entertains her with stories about the coffee he brings her each morning.
Though the play is officially labeled a romantic comedy, Jacobs, a writer and producer whose work has been featured on Broadway, TV and in film, has put so many obstacles in the duo’s path — much like potholes in many real African roadways — it can sometimes mean a bumpy ride.
It’s certainly a different breed of big African cat than Cox’s last outing at the home of the Ross Valley Players.
That was “Twentieth Century,” which I called a “shamelessly silly…time-machine homage to Broadway creatures of the night-lights.”
In “Impressionism,” the protagonists are informed by artwork masterfully projected onto the gallery’s rear wall. And scenes are connected by both blackouts and slideshows of paintings most likely familiar to even non-art lovers.
Empty frames on the set walls bothered me a bit, however. I was never sure if they were meant to be symbolic, and I found the device distracting.
“Impressionism” probably shouldn’t be summed up by the following exchange:
Katherine — “I don’t understand anything.” Thomas — “Neither do I.”
Nor could a revitalized Katherine be allowed to condense everything into, “What if I wanted to…be ravished in a chair once in a while?”
But she might summarize the show by observing, of both art and life, “You can’t get it when it’s right in front of you — you have to step back…you have to step back to see it other than splotches.”
“Impressionism” is definitely more than the sum of its splotches.
“Impressionism” runs at The Barn Theatre, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Feb. 15. Night performances, Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. Matinees, Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $14 to $29. Information: (415) 456-9555 or www.rossvalleyplayers.com.
Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or check out his blog at www.vitalitypress.com
