Regarding the first, the main plot attempts to parallel the lives of men and women with their attitudes toward works of art. Since most of the works sold in the gallery that is the play's prime locale are Impressionist, it would follow that life, like Impressionism, is best experienced at some distance. This, at any rate, is the position of Katharine, the gallery owner and heroine.

But photography, as practiced by Thomas, now working for Katharine, is Realism, which also is his attitude towards life. These divergent attitudes are conveyed in confusing scenes flashing back to Katharine's and Thomas's earlier lives: hers as lonely child and, later, as model for a womanizing, cynical painter; his as a globe-trotting photojournalist.

Between scenes, in director Jack O'Brien's technologically dazzling production, famous paintings drop down and glitter momentarily before flying away. Some also hang in the gallery, along with a Chagall mermaid featured on a tourist poster for the French Riviera and a photograph of a black boy in a Mutondo tree, shot by Thomas when he was working in Africa for National Geographic magazine.

An aquatint by Mary Cassatt, "La Toilette," of a mother washing a small child in a basin, has great symbolic importance to Katharine and to a rich woman collector who wants to buy it for the unloving daughter who has herself just become a mother. More portentous parallels abound, along with ample proof that the author has read at least one, possibly even two, profusely illustrated histories of Impressionism, and wishes to share his profound insights with us.

Regarding trickery: Certain phrases are reiterated at various, putatively significant moments. Certain paintings mutate heavy-handedly into the characters and their stories. Though accomplished with finesse, it all reeks of gimmickry.

The third ailment is trivial cuteness or cute triviality. There are maddeningly lengthy discussions of the relative merits of raspberry muffins and coffeecake (the loser) and of their boxes secured with string versus tape (the loser); also of the history of coffee and its many varieties, some so fine as to be life-changing, others perhaps even finer but beyond the financial reach of the play's characters.

Witty Profundities

These discussions abound in apercus the author nudges us to perceive as witty profundities, until the whole thing feels like a full box of raspberry muffins crammed down our throats.

Irons plays diffident, ironic, but devoted Thomas, as well as Katharine's father in one flashback and the painter lover in another, mostly by varying his accents. Allen does -- besides tart yet vulnerable, ultimately melting Katharine -- her own mother and a member of Doctors Without Borders in various flashbacks.

Andre De Shields is both a canny old Tanzanian fisherman and the wise old baker who delivers, besides raspberry muffins, also a deeply perceptive, positive interpretation of a painting that a young couple (Aaron Lazar and Margarita Levieva) in love with it hope to acquire. Marsha Mason and Michael T. Weiss provide their own rich vignettes as art collectors.

All these dedicated actors can no more salvage the play than can O'Brien. The eminent director tried everything to save this claptrap, including big, last-minute cuts -- which, as usual, make things only shorter, not better.

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(John Simon is the New York drama critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: John Simon in New York at jis1925@aol.com.