Sunday,
August 17, 2008
Play: "Italian American
Reconciliation" - Romantic Tragedy-Comedy
The
ANNOTICO Report
"Italian
American Reconciliation" is a Play about the Human Predicament, more
specifically about Relationships, with an Italian flavor,
but avoids the trite or negative stereotypes.
It's a Romantic Tragedy-Comedy
Love Italian American Style
Joy
Ledingham
Friday,
August 15, 2008
ITALIAN AMERICAN
RECONCILIATION
Aldo: "Why
did you marry him?"
Janice: "He asked me."
Director/actor
Jennifer Clement brings not only years of experience to this play, but she
visits part of her own past at the old Tomato Cafi.
The smell of garlic emanating from a mini kitchen stage right offers a
mouthwatering welcome to the theatre. Minestrone simmers on the hotplate, and
it's all you can do to stop from walking onto Sean Tyson's set, hoping to be
served what smells like heaven in a soup pot.
The kitchen isn't
completely gratuitous; Teresa (Krystal Vrba) works in
an Italian restaurant somewhere in
Although the
story is, on one level, about Huey and Janice, it's told from the perspective
of Huey's friend Aldo (
Although the
lesson Aldo teaches is not entirely new and the plot is slight, Italian
American Reconciliation is tremendously entertaining. Shanley's
dialogue crackles with stuff like the comment Teresa's friend Aunt May (Linda Darlow) makes: "Men get upset about the past. Women
are worried about the future." Or Teresa's admission, "I really
love him." (Pause.) "To
the best of my knowledge."
But what makes it
all work is this superb cast. The Beaumont Stage is an intimate space, and
these actors work it like garlic: not too much, not too little. MacDonald is a
powerhouse, a "take no prisoners" kind of actor who has us and holds
us for a couple of hours. In the end, it's his character that learns a valuable
lesson. Or maybe not. And that's OK, too.
Ratner's Huey is ridiculously and
purposely rigged out in a poet's ruffled shirt, jodhpurs, short leather boots
and a Woody Woodpecker haircut. If Huey weren't such an emotional wreck, Ratner's sad, little-boy looks would completely win us over.
But it's so obvious that this pushover Huey is no match for Janice.
Equally
conflicted Teresa is the woman for him. Vrba handles
one of the juiciest scenes in the play (one of those "What? You're breaking up with me?" scenes) with skill and pizzazz. Shanley captures so perfectly that turning point and Vrba executes it beautifully.
No-nonsense Aunt
May is a touchstone amidst all the mismatches and Darlow
brings warmth and generosity to the role. You have to love a character that
says, "Don't ask me to witness. I don't retain."
Matching
MacDonald's big performance is Triolo who, in Janice's
marriage to Huey, brought only "heartbreak, screaming, bad food and a dead
dog." Triolo is fantastic in this
bitch-with-a-broken-heart role. She doesn't appear until Act 2 and when she
does, it's a tenement balcony scene that cheekily turns the Romeo and Juliet
balcony scene on its ass.
Romantic tragedy
Italian American Reconciliation isn't. But in the end it's not completely
comedy either. Shanley takes the old maxim
about love as the greatest human accomplishment and turns it sideways. Maybe
he's got it right; maybe that's what amori is
really all about.
Playwright John
Patrick Shanley packs so many true
reflections on relationships into his play you don't know whether to laugh or
cry. Not that there's really a choice; Shanley's
biting humour keeps us laughing from beginning to end
in this Evolving Arts Collective production.
At the
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