In some of the artwork and ads for Impressionism, it styles itself “A New
American
Play,” which strikes me as inappropriately haughty for a mildly (but
always
agreeably) pretentious romantic comedy. But it seems to me a symptom of
the
(always-tacit, always-present) Hollywood inferiority complex next to
Broadway;
for though playwright Michael Jacobs was
briefly a visitor to Broadway in 1978 with the floperoo, middlebrow sex
comedy Cheaters,
he has spent the intervening years
in sitcom television, becoming something of a mogul, but not on the
“prestige”
sitcoms that are discussed with reverence, like Cheers, Mary Tyler
Moore, All
in the Family, Taxi, Frasier and
the like,
but rather the Friday night and family hour, feelgood, life-lessons fare: he was in on the creation, or
sole creator, of Charles in Charge, My Two Dads, Boy Meets
World and the puppetronic cult
favorite, Dinosaurs,
among others. And none of that is
to be
sneezed at. Niche market though it is, Mr. Jacobs cracked it and made
millions
of people happy (and, one assumes, millions of dollars) doing so. But
you don’t
return to Broadway after that without a good deal of self-awareness,
and/or
self-consciousness, and somewhere along the way, Impressions
got the “new, American play”
brand because someone,
somewhere wanted us to know that this time, Mr. Jacobs was serious.
Which
is too bad, because he’s not. Not in the sense of suddenly having
crossed over
into high art. Despite that the two main characters are the curators of
an art
studio that sells the work it displays; despite that each of the
pictures being
sold triggers a flashback to a seminal turning point in the lives of
one or the
other; despite that there is some examination of the deeper meaning of
art, and
beyond that the visceral connection that renders academia moot—all
resonant devices and themes, to be sure—Mr. Jacobs is still a sitcom
man
at heart, and though the surface story is without overt “plottiness,”
the
little details underneath—backstory, casual references (say, to the
local
baker of muffins), conversations along the way all build a “plot
beneath the
surface,” so to speak (impressions, get
it?), such that when all is said and done, it wraps up as neatly as any
“special two part episode.” (All right, three-part: the show is 90
minutes
long, no intermish.) And while he has learned not to crack jokes willy-nilly and
sacrifice the character for
the quip (I saw Cheaters, and it was a sad, strained affair, in
part because
he never gave the jokery a rest), he certainly smells where the funny
is, and
when he lets himself go there, he always lands the joke with the
conspicuous
panache of one who’s an old hand at it. (When the curator played by Jeremy
Irons asks a question of the one played by Joan Allen that stuns her, Mr. Irons, waiting a
dutiful beat,
gets to quip, “You’re not from The Talkers, are you?” Strictly speaking
[no pun
intended] the line is meaningless, as Ms. Allen has been talking just
fine all
night; nor is a locution like “not from The Talkers” really in the
vocabulary
of the Irons character, but it’s cute way of saying I’ve taken you
by
surprise, haven’t I? and Jacobs can’t resist the easy lob,
and nor
should he, because it nets him perhaps the evening’s warmest laugh.)
A
lot of reviews have speculated as to how and why such a huge cadre of
not
inconsiderable producers signed on board to present this lightweight
confection
of a play (16 different offices are cited), plus those lead actors, plus director
Jack O’Brien, plus a supporting
cast that includes the
likes of Michael T. Weiss (aka TV’s The Pretender) and Marsha Mason in roles
way beneath
their [perceived] industry stature; and André de Shields (whose dual roles are somewhat flashier).
To me it’s
not so great a mystery: Jacobs is a Hollywood money machine, probably
even a
good guy, or he wouldn’t be attracted to the kind of material that has
become
his specialty; some of these people may be old friends, some just
people who
want the connection to a TV series powerhouse in a business that’s all
about If
you’re there for me now, I’ll be there for you later. I remember…
and good old cronyism. And why not? None of that seems abused here. And
there’s
also this: pro that Jacobs is, he probably produced a script that looks
great
on paper. And if the audience I sat with is any indication, Impressionism
is a genuine crowd-pleaser, if
not a sure-fire critic
pleaser.
Which
makes me wonder…About two years ago I became a member of a group
called—now, this is absolutely real, as Casey Stengel said, you could
look it up—the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers
(IAMTW),
a collective of writers (mostly of prose fiction) from all levels of
the food
chain, from entry level to New York Times best
sellers; the only qualification for membership is you must have
authored at
least one piece of published, professional licensed tie-in prose (as opposed to fan fiction,
for example)
original or adaptive, with its roots in a pre-existing, possibly
franchised,
story universe, be it a TV series, film or film series, computer game
or
comic/graphic novel (my Alien Nation novel for Pocket was my ticket in). It
consists of a grand bunch of
folks, with a sense of organization-based community I’ve never
encountered
before except for the
BMI-Lehman
Engel BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. And why does IAMTW exist? To take
the
industry and literati taint off tie-in writing, to finally have it
recognized
as the craft, indeed the art, it really is, as demanding and worthy of
respect
as any other kind of creative writing in any medium, worthy of praise
or
criticism only for how well it upholds self-evident, universal
standards of
quality, along with the needs of its particular specialty.
And
I wonder…I wonder if, likewise, Impressionism might have made a better, well, impression on the critics if it didn’t seem so much
like it was
puffing up its profile by way of tacitly apologizing for itself. Why “A
New
American Play”? Why not just: “The Funny New Romantic Comedy by That
Friday
Night Family Hour Sitcom Guy”? And with gusto. Even in art, declaration
of
solidarity wears down bigotry.
Nothing
wrong with taking pride in what you are, as long as you’re doing your
job well.
And to hell with the snobs. What do they contribute…?
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