The play, written by Dennis McIntyre and directed by Bjørn Johnson, opened this week at the Open Fist Theatre in Hollywood. It is set in 1916 Paris, and follows the titular Italian figurative artist, played by Matt Marquez, as he wages a personal war against his demons as well as a world that refuses to accept his art.

The play does a great job in capturing the atmosphere of the Paris of the time. It achieves this feat due to commendable set design by Zachary B. Guiler and Sammy Ross' creative lighting design. The set is arranged in a novel, dark, and rugged-yet-harmonious way, and helps accentuate the various themes of the play. However, the management of the stage throughout the various scenes and their transitions is not much better than amateur. The props and costumes look rather too artificial and do not help to reduce the play's more inherent flaws. The responsive way the lighting grows very dark during these transitions, dims at sad scenes, or shines brighter when lanterns are lit, is the only thing that helps to reduce all these blemishes and bring out their good points.

The play’s most unsettling flaw is that of superficiality and over-the-top simplification of its characters and events. There is not enough depth in the characters to befit the type of story they are trying to convey. "Modigliani" could be a story about a man who, like the real Modigliani, is struggling with everything—with himself, with his lover, with his peers, and, most frustratingly with his art. The play, as presented at the Open Fist, however, was far off target. The characters, not just Modigliani, were all perpetually in a drunken state, sometimes staggering across the stage, other times fighting, or just making poor jokes and laughing at them. This might have been what happened in real life, and the depiction would be acceptable, but there was no revelation of personality, or grief, or thoughts, or love, that showed through the drunken stupor. The result was scenes that felt like they just arbitrarily moved from one to the next, progressing the story without actually progressing anything. However, the lengthy drunken scenes with crude humour did manage to garner many guffaws from the back of the audience. 

It's not clear which was more at fault in creating this unrealistic world, the writing or the acting. There is a scene where Modigliani’s mistress, played by Nicole Stuart, perplexingly announces with her head up high before leaving, “My name is Beatrix Hastings!” Many lines were repeated for added dramatic effect.

The accents also became tiresome quickly. Although one could slowly get used to the poorly imitated Italian accents, the inclusion of a forced British accent and then an American one completely set the aura of the play off its rocker. 

As for the ending, it was anticlimactic and detached from the rest of the play. The moments leading up to it were not harmoniously connected and spread out, and the conclusion itself felt compressed into about five minutes. 

At best, the play is avoidable.

Reach reporter Raunak Khosla here.