The saga of America's immigrants has been told so often in films and on stage that by now a rewrite of its self-congratulatory clich s has become mandatory. But few dramatists want to roll up their sleeves and do the job. What gets overlooked in these celebratory songfests is that digging up skeletons can turn up as many problems as it does solutions.
Easy patriotism tends to wither with the slightest touch of irony.
Megan Grant, a photojournalist back in New York after a stint working with the displaced people of Kosovo, learns that her father is missing. She and her estranged son find a box of old photographs, many featuring the missing father as a child, often with his mother and father. These pictures lead to a series of flashbacks that move from Ellis Island, where the hopeful family arrived from Ireland in the late '30s, to the Photography Department in New York's Museum of Modern Art. Your guess is as good as mine. Aside from the ambiguity of the flashbacks, the show doesn't even serve up ripping-good melodrama.