A Bronx Tale
Tickets from $26 Buy Tickets
Cititour.com Review
What kind of a gangster quotes Machiavelli? The kind invented by film star Chazz Palminteri for the revival of his play, "A Bronx Tale." In
1989 the then out-of-work actor wrote this one-man-show to get noticed and it eventually landed him a film adaptation of his off-
Broadway play. This time around it's being given a Broadway gloss, with the help of director Jerry Zaks, but the humor and pathos of the story and the extraordinary performance by the actor/playwright still make the show a viable destination.
Based upon his childhood growing up in the sixties in a rough and tumble neighborhood filled with flashy and lethal tough guys, Palminteri creates dozens of colorful characters from JoJo the Whale to Eddie Mush to Frankie Coffee Cake, but none so chilling as that of his mentor Sonny. The gangster takes young "C," as he is known, under his tutelage after, at the age of nine, he witnesses Sonny firing a fatal shot over a parking dispute. The incident is replayed in chilling detail as Palminteri inhabits himself as a nine-year-old equally as petrified as he is excited by the attention.
The imagery in the play is both descriptive and physical as Palminteri hitches his leg, or clips his knee, or hikes his shoulders to re-create the tough guys he so distinctly describes. The juxtaposition of these mobsters pitted against his own father, a bus driver uninterested in any life except an ethical one, gives the play a layer of sentimentality and an everyman struggle of good vs. evil.
Palminteri’s father tells his young son, "the saddest thing in this world is wasted talent." With "A Bronx Tale", Palminteri never has to be concerned that he hasn’t lived up to his old man’s expectations.
By Lesley Alexander
Cast
Chazz Palminteri
Open/Close Dates
Opening 10/4/2007
Closing 2/24/2008
Box Office
(212) 239-6200
Theatre Info
Walter Kerr Theatre
219 West 48th Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
Comments
Sign up for our newsletter !