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Sunday, October 27, 2024

REVIEW: NOSTALGIC FAMILY TALE, SUPERB "MY ITALY STORY" RESONATES WITH ALL ETHNICITIES

 

By Ruth Ross

When I reviewed My Italy Story in 2006 for its New Jersey Regional Premiere at 12 Miles West Theatre, I referenced Leo Tolstoy’s quote in Anna Karenina that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” noting that it was obvious that he had never met large, contentious Italian families like the one that populates Joseph Gallo’s play.

Well, here we are 18 years later, just in time for Italian Heritage Month, and the American Theater Group’s production of My Italy resonates in another way, centered as it is around genealogy, a hobby that bloomed during the pandemic lockdown when it seemed that everyone was taking DNA tests and building family trees!

In this nostalgic one-man show, Michael Notardonato brings to life a crowd of colorful family members and other people Thomas DaGato meets as he embarks upon an odyssey to Vallata, their ancestral Italian town, to heal an 18-year rift in his boisterous, brawling family.

Over three “acts” on a bare stage populated by two chairs, a sheet and a screen upon which projections transport us to various venues, his performance features 80 minutes of nonstop dialogue, much of it delivered in the voices of his grandmother, sister, mother, uncles, aunts and cousins—here and in Italy.

As Tommy attempts to plumb the depths of familial dysfunction to discover the reason for the rift that has resulted in a silence of 18 years between Aunt Florence and Uncle Rudy and their respective families, he presents glimpses of his own family and his role in it: as his grandma’s spaghetti taster, his sister’s antagonist on the family’s weekly trips to the New Jersey shore, a new uncle expressing joy at the birth of his nephew and a son dismayed his mother’s reticence to show him family photos she has kept locked away.

His trip to the family village is especially droll (his account of a bus trip up a mountain on a single lane road is especially hilarious) yet bittersweet (his reunion with his grandfather’s brothers and his cousin Gerardo). “Go to Avellino and ask” becomes a metaphor for travel—through landscape and time.

However, Playwright Gallo doesn’t tip his hand easily. His protagonist’s actions build up to the unexpected revelation of a major family secret. I won’t give anything away, but it’s as satisfying as it is dramatic!

Director Charlotte Cohn elicits a tour de force performance from young Notardonato and keeps the action moving to an inexorable conclusion. Paul Hudson’s atmospheric lighting conveys the passage of time and place; Travis Joseph Wright’s superb sound design enhances the production.

So, it was good to see that Joseph Gallo’s family saga, My Italy Story, has stood the test of time. Large, ethnic families are similar and different; that this one is Italian doesn’t matter. I am sure the dysfunction and love resonated with many in the audience, regardless of ethnic background.

If you love relatable theater and revel in smart writing and superb performance, you won’t want to miss My Italy Story. It will be performed at Hamilton Stage, 360 Hamilton Street, in Rahway, through October 27, and then at the Sieminski Theater, 8000 Fellowship Road, in Basking Ridge, November 1-3, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 PM and Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 PM. Select a showtime and purchase tickets HERE.

Photos by Lianne Schoenwiesner, Spotlights Photography.