Theatre in Review: The People in the Picture (Roundabout Theatre Company/Studio 54)

I have concluded that Donna Murphy isn't an actress; she's a shape-shifter. There's no other way to explain the transformations she achieves in The People in the Picture. Cast as Reisel, a star of the Warsaw Yiddish theatre scene circa 1938 and her elderly self 40-odd years later in New York, all the actress needs is to add or remove pair of glasses and four decades attach themselves to her or fall away, as needed. You can spot aspects of what she's doing - a change in posture, a shift in voice - but the overall effect is much more than any technical gesture can accomplish. It's almost as if she's swapping out one soul for another in quick-change fashion. If The People in the Picture does nothing else, it reminds us that Murphy is a singular and hugely gifted talent.

Sadly, The People in the Picture doesn't do much else. The first-night press, speaking with rare unanimity, pretty much said all that needed to be said. I would add that the show contains some very rich material. The elderly Reisel, known as Bubbie, earnestly schools her young granddaughter in her life in the theatre and her wartime experiences, while her chilly, skeptical daughter looks on. As it turns out, Bubbie is presenting an edited version of her history, and, on her deathbed, she is finally made to reveal the secret that, even when suppressed, had a profound effect on her family's history. Too bad that Iris Rainer Dart's book and lyrics speak almost totally in clichés, that the score by Mike Stoller and Artie Butler, is overburdened with maudlin ballads, and that Leonard Foglia's direction is too sluggish to whip up much drama. Even odder is Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography, which consists of classic moves executed in weirdly inappropriate circumstances; the ghetto ballet that opens Act II is one for the books.

Also, if you're going to go to the trouble of hiring such scene-stealers as Lewis J. Stadlen, Chip Zien, and Joyce Van Patten, it's wasteful to reduce them to a kind of ghost Greek chorus. Also underused, given their gifts are Alexander Gemignani as Reisel's gay husband (it's a long story), Christopher Innvar as her true love and the father of her child, and Louis Hobson as the nice, young Jewish internist Reisel wants to hook up with her divorced daughter. As the daughter, named Red (for her hair), Nicole Parker is made to mope around endlessly; at least Rachel Resheff is a charmer as Reisel's adoring granddaughter.

Because much of the action revolves around a photo that contains the people in Reisel's past, Riccardo Hernandez has surrounded the action with a giant gilt frame that is cantilevered out over the stage. In addition, he flies in smaller picture frames, and a mini-proscenium for the theatre scenes; as a result, the stage gets pretty cluttered with framing devices. They do have a nice way of breaking up Elaine J. McCarthy's projections, which, as displayed on a motion-picture screen upstage, might otherwise seem too prominent. (McCarthy's imagery includes some witty pastiches of period motion pictures, giving us a taste of Reisel's film career.) James F. Ingalls' superb lighting effortlessly demarcates the lines between past and present, reality and fantasy. Ann Hould-Ward's costumes include some lovely period dresses and finely tailored men's suits; in the more contemporary scenes, the costumes indicate the '70s time period without being overt. Dan Moses Schreier is the undisputed king of Studio 54, having designed sound for many musicals there, and his work is typically first-rate.

I gather that The People in the Picture is drawn from incidents and people in Dart's life. Too bad; in the hands of a more experienced writer, it might have made for a knockout of a musical. Then again, any show that allows Murphy to do what she does best isn't a total washout.--David Barbour