Julianna Margulies’ Broadway show is a sappy slog

There is no doubt as to what the new play “Left on Tenth,” which opened at the James Earl Jones Theatre Wednesday night, wants to be: A romantic, funny and harrowing tale of a woman’s rebirth.

Yet, after seeing Delia Ephron’s Broadway show starring Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher, different descriptors jump to mind: Sappy, sluggish and awkward.

That Ephron, who co-wrote rom-coms such as “You’ve Got Mail” and “Hanging Up” with her late sister Nora, based this cliche-ridden slog on the dramatic highs and lows of her own life adds another layer of discomfort.

I felt bad — awful, really — that I disliked the dramedy about this real person’s heartbreak, illness and eventual triumph as much as I did. But the mangled tone, laughless jokes and emotional fakery are impossible to look beyond.

The charisma of the two leads can’t save cardboard dialogue. Noble intentions make the pacing no less clunky. Even the cuteness of its two real dogs fails to pump life into a show that’s ostensibly about living. 

Ephron’s play begins with a relatable scenario. Delia (Margulies) is on hold with Verizon trying to fix her downed internet connection. 

She lives on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, and her apartment is depicted by set designer Beowulf Boritt as a wall of tall, cream-colored bookshelves. The comfy-elegant vibe, appropriately, is that of a Nancy Meyers house.

The seriousness turns up when Delia reveals why the web is on the fritz: She just canceled the landline of her late husband, Jerry, and Verizon went overboard. He died six months ago after 33 years of marriage. She’s been lost without him.

As writers tend to do when their lives are thrown into chaos, Delia takes to her keyboard. 

She pens a comic essay about her phone foibles in the newspaper, and soon, a reader reaches out by email: Peter (Gallagher), a California psychiatrist, who claims he went on several dates with her when she was 18. He happens to be a Jungian, a word that’s said far too many times in this show.

Their sweet back-and-forth — Margulies, a genial actress, and Gallagher sit at his and her desks for quite a while — turns into a long-distance relationship.

“I began to believe I was falling into my own romantic comedy,” Delia says in one of the play’s countless moments of distancing, stakes-obliterating narration. 

She’s been obsessed with love since she first watched “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” as a kid.

A dopey transition dance — director Susan Stroman’s calling card, such as it is — that’s meant to summon that 1954 movie musical should have been axed straight away.

Alas, too many poor choices have been left in “Tenth.” 

Casting Gallagher was one of the few strong ones. His warm presence and resonant voice add levels to Peter that certainly aren’t evident in the hokey writing. His character, save for an obsession with red pepper flakes, is robotically perfect. 

And so is Delia’s new life. But her happiness is shattered when she’s diagnosed with leukemia, the same cancer that killed her sister.

Peter sticks by his girl as the show starkly relocates from desks and books to a sterile hospital room, and the relationship intensifies while she battles the disease for months.

The structure of the chemotherapy scenes — montages of worsening and improvement — is wonky. The audience should be crying buckets while Delia and Peter suffer, but I’ve had more affecting train commutes. 

It’s not for lack of trying. A real stumper comes when the unconscious patient’s blood-oxygen levels start to drop, and doting Peter encourages her to push through it as the teary song “Ship in a Bottle” plays.

Margulies is game and doesn’t hold back as Delia deteriorates and lashes out. Nonetheless, the sequences are afflicted by the same artificiality shared by the entire production. 

Part of the problem is that Stroman sticks to her comfort zone and has directed “Left on Tenth” like it’s a musical. She’s far too concerned with transitions, adding kitschy flourishes and changing wigs than honestly portraying humans.   

Delia’s struggle, therefore, is choreographed — not embodied or felt.

Other than Delia, every character is textureless and uninteresting. Peter Francis James and Kate MacCluggage play a Rolodex of people in her life: a British best friend in Wales, a Chai-tea-latte type in Northern California, doctors, nurses, waiters and more. 

MacCluggage puts on a different shiny wig for nearly every person — it’s practically “Rainbow High” from “Evita” with hairpieces — and goes to town on the accents (English, Slavic, Valley Girl). But substantively each role is exactly the same.

They’re devices, not people.     

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.