Left on Tenth – 26 October 2024

Left on Tenth was incredibly meaningful to one of Broadway largest demographics of ticket buyers – people who are over the retirement age. These people are seldom the protagonists of a Broadway story. And a Broadway love story? Forget it! Representation of older generations on stage seems to be reserved for grandparents, who often die somewhere in the journey, and in doing so motivate their grandchildren to make big life changes. And as actors age, the ability to play interesting, and dynamic characters falls away – because no one is writing them. 

Enter Left on Tenth, a beautiful picture of falling in love again after the death of a spouse and rediscovering the magic of the world in restaurants, travel, kisses, and sex. Delia (Julianna Margulies)  is swept off her feet by Peter (Peter Gallagher) who romantically stays by Delia’s side through an intensely difficult battle with leukemia. Steadfast and true, Peter gives Delia the boundless support of a Hallmark movie that is as deeply romantic as any teenage love story – maybe deeper.

At 69 years old, Peter Gallagher shines as an attractive, strong, romantic hero. The significance of the uniqueness of playing a leading role on Broadway at that age plucked a heartstring for an audience that props up an industry in which they seldom see themselves. It was absolutely delightful to feel the love in the room for stories that resonated across time and age and generations – that is to say that we all hate being on hold with our phone carriers, the sterility of how illness is depicted in artistic mediums, and the losses that accompany the forward march of time. 

A memoir about these experiences seems an unlikely source material for a Broadway show because it’s not quite entertainment. And yet, it shines. The love is as charming and romantic as The Notebook, as unthinkable and inevitable as Hell’s Kitchen, as quirky and fun as Kimberly Akimbo, and as magically improbable as Aladdin. It’s a tale requiring blind faith and trust that another person can hold you when your beauty can only be inner, because you are stuck to a hospital bed, suffering with an unknowable outcome. It’s about the resilience of pulling through and abandoning your hesitance to pursue the rest of your life with someone who you are curious about, despite having already been through the hardship of losing a life partner and already knowing that pain.

Juliana Margolis gives an incredible performance in which we see a window to the girl Delia once was in addition to the dying woman who wants to speed up that process because she cannot take the pain. These characters are very real (and, of course, based on real people). Seeing a faithful reality on stage like this feels like somewhat of a miracle. It’s not over-the-top dramatic. It’s not an allegory or rewritten classic. It is nothing more and nothing less than Delia Ephron’s truth. It’s a beautiful thing to see a performance so deeply grounded in truth, in reality. This truth is just as powerful, if not more, so, as any of Broadway’s imaginings. Left on Tenth is a journey worth taking, utterly deserving of the spotlight it stands in.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Rubenstein.