The title of Donald Margulies's play "What's Wrong With This Picture?" asks a loaded question. The temptation is to respond in kind: What's right about it?
In its initial stretches, the work, which opened last night at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, presents itself as a Jewish family sitcom, all bright colors and broad swipes. It then veers off into loopy fantasy for a while. By the time the evening is over, it has sobered up considerably and the issues on the coffee table are guilt and mourning.
If the strands were artfully woven together, "What's Wrong With This Picture?" might seem more original and, who knows, provocative, too. But it's very much a chameleon of a play: it changes appearance without a lot of warning and slowly drains its star, Faith Prince, of her effervescence and warmth, qualities that have helped make for her stardom.
"What's Wrong With This Picture?" was first presented nearly 10 years ago in a workshop at the Manhattan Theater Club and has since had several productions, most notably at the Jewish Repertory Theater in 1990. Although the author has continued to rework it, the play is an odd candidate for revival and an even odder prospect for Broadway. (Mr. Margulies's "Loman Family Picnic" is far more accomplished and entertaining, and deals with some of the same issues.) It's as if someone had decided to pull Neil Simon's "Come Blow Your Horn" or Herb Gardner's "Thieves" out of mothballs. At this late date, whatever for?
Ms. Prince is Shirley, middle-class Jewish housewife from Brooklyn, doting mother, duster extraordinaire, fancy dresser and good-looker with a rippling laugh that men adore. She's also dead and buried at the start of the play. Her family has just finished sitting shiva. The in-laws are preparing to go home. Life is resuming, except that Shirley's teen-age son, Artie (David Moscow), can't yet forgive her for leaving him, and her husband, Mort (Alan Rosenberg), is still so grief-stricken that his face looks as if it had been stung by a swarm of bees.
Shirley, it appears, choked to death on a piece of moo shu pork while dining out at a Chinese restaurant. "Maybe if she bothered to cook a little more often, she'd be alive today," sniffs Mort's mother (Florence Stanley), never one to criticize the dead, mind you, but not one to mince words either. Mort's father (Jerry Stiller) natters on about his parking abilities, chews his nitroglycerine pills and drifts further into senility. Mort's sister (Marcell Rosenblatt) angles for Shirley's fur coat. Bickering and food jokes predominate. You could be in televisionland.
Then, late in the first act, Ms. Prince makes her appearance. Twigs in her hair, her dirt-stained shroud flying, she has returned from the grave to help mend the lingering hurts, straighten up the living room and generally set things right. The notion is promisingly fanciful. But the problem quickly surfaces: Mr. Margulies has never made it clear what misunderstandings she left behind, what emotional injustices require correcting. The sins of the departed and the guilt of the survivors are equally nebulous. Consequently, there's not much dramatic payoff when Shirley, realizing she has no place among the living, bids her son a final farewell and heads back to the grave.
The director, Joe Mantello, who guided "Love! Valour! Compassion!" to triumph earlier this season, is mostly at a loss when it comes to reconciling the warring elements of "What's Wrong With This Picture?" He seems more comfortable with the serious implications of the script than with its quips and comic quibbles. But it's the comedy that the audience is eager for. The cast members, straddling two worlds, don't always give the impression that they're in the same play.
Mr. Moscow couldn't be more earnest, even when he's putting on one of Shirley's beaded gowns at the urgings of his despondent father and shimmying as she used to. He'd be ridiculous if at the same time part of him weren't holding back, searching warily for the grain of sense in so much senselessness. The tactic is productive, the performance likable. Mr. Stiller brings great zest to a character who's decomposing in mind and body, which is not the contradiction you'd think. Ms. Stanley's standard-issue Jewish matriarch and Ms. Rosenblatt's graspy sister-in-law, being more predictable, are less interesting.
Paralyzed by his wife's death, Mr. Rosenberg not only revives immediately upon her return, but also enters a second adolescence. If the actor's goofy enthusiasm makes Mort a bit of a dope, that may be just what Mort is. Ms. Prince's character is the ambiguous one. We're told how loving Shirley was (and is), how genuine, how life-affirming. But she may have cheated on Mort, and she certainly had a habit of scaring her son to death at Coney Island, where she'd swim far out into the ocean and then turn around and pretend to wave goodbye. Is there a touch of cruelty behind the warm red smile?
Ms. Prince's cheeks shine like apples and she has a lovely, melting way of looking at adults that suggests they are actually 3 years old and adorable. Her laugh, like Shirley's, is contagious. All evening long, the actress seems to be gearing up for songs that never come. But you don't get much of the woman's secret depths. Without those underpinnings, the sparkle and solicitude can seem facile at times.
Derek McLane's set, a vulgar apartment surrounded by blue sky and billowing clouds, puts the play in proper metaphysical perspective. Ann Roth's costumes and Brian MacDevitt's lighting are the work of professionals. "What's Wrong With This Picture?" is getting as ample a production as most plays can expect on Broadway these days.
Title notwithstanding, the real head-scratcher is: Why?
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
By Donald Margulies; directed by Joe Mantello; sets by Derek McLane; costumes by Ann Roth; lighting by Brian MacDevitt; sound by Aural Fixation; wigs by Paul Huntley; original music by Mel Marvin; associate producer, Ruth Kalkstein; production stage manager, Michael Ritchie; general manager, Richard Frankel Productions/Marc Routh; technical supervisor, Peter Fulbright. Presented by David Stone, the Booking Office, Albert Nocciolino, Betsy Dollinger, in association with Ted Snowdon. At the Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47th Street, Manhattan.
Faith Prince (Shirley), Alan Rosenberg (Mort), Jerry Stiller (Sid), David Moscow (Artie), Marcell Rosenblatt (Ceil) and Florence Stanley (Bella).
