When used humorously, "Italian-style" probably dates back to De Filippo, who created Marriage Italian Style.
Ah, to have had Marcello Mastroianni in this Americanized translation (by Tori Haring-Smith) might have been heaven. For the play simply craves an Italian dialect.
Don Gennaro Jovine is bewildered by his war-torn Naples. Nevertheless, he has answers for everything, although no one wants to listen. Craig Smith does well as the hero; but any character who feels that life should not be printed on 1,000-Lira bank notes discloses an older and more seasoned soul. The character's crotchetiness and smothering family love just weren't there.
Elise Stone, who plays Gennaro's wife, Amalia, is well worth seeing. Stone's extraordinary, Mediterranean profile and husky-angel voice suggest an Anne Bancroft-type career ahead.
Amalia runs a black market grocery store, with butter, coffee, and wheels of cheese under her mattress. Money hardens her heart, and when the plot's chickens come home to roost she gets her comeuppance. The playwright, instead of giving us the tragedy he could have done, saves the day with a few moral platitudes and a character's swift exit.
Brian Aldous has illuminated well enough, and his San Gennaro feast of colored lights over the auditorium was a treat.
The raked set by Robert Joel Schwartz was suitably dingy and worked well, but could have changed more when the family reached millionaire status.
Susan Soetaert's costumes were a World War II fantasy (seamed nylons!), marvelously expressing character, time, and changing fortunes.
The director created some great comic moments, especially when a chorus of mourners wails over a pretended corpse, the wails turn convincingly into sirens announcing bombs, the bombs fall, and ceiling parts fall down. Not Phantom of the Opera, but effective.
The playwright was an actor who knew how to create wonderful roles. There are 14 of them, and each has a moment in the spotlight. All actors rose to their occasion. Not mentioned were Harris Berlinsky, Christopher Black, Kennedy Brown, Abner Genece, David Lockhart, Molly O'Donnell, David Snider, Angela Vitale, Monique Vukovic, and Mark Waterman. Kennedy Brown (as a smoothie who collapses, visibly shaking, into a private hell) and Molly Pietz (who couldn't make herself - or the audience - stop laughing) stood out.
The trouble with an American repertory company, of course, is that waving hands and arms to "talk Italian" doesn't quite take you out of Paramus. Fellini would have walked a few blocks south of the theatre to find some authentic Neapolitans. But then, he worked with movie budgets.
Copyright 1999 Marshall Yaeger