Why "A Bronx Tale" Deserves More Respect

Some shows just aren't made for critics, theater snobs and other members of the theatergoing aristocracy who are always on the prowl for something cutting edge. A Bronx Tale, which opened at the Longacre Theatre last week, is one of those shows. It's a well-crafted traditional musical with an easy-listening score, peppy dance numbers, entertaining performances and an accessible plot with a comfortable can-we-all-get-along message.

Yet the show isn't getting much respect. And the nods it is getting kind of damn it with faint praise. The New York Times' Charles Isherwood, one of the more welcoming of the major critics, opened his review by likening it to "plain old pasta with red sauce."

On the other hand, the show is getting lots of audience love. It's been playing to 90% capacity since previews began a month ago, with its average ticket price hovering around $100.

The aristocrats sniff that the people coming out to see A Bronx Tale are the bridge-and-tunnel crowd that made Jersey Boys, which is scheduled to play its final performance on Jan. 15, a 12-year hit. Or they blame the tourist ticket buyers who might have seen the 1993 movie, which was directed by and starred Robert De Niro. But you can also count me, a native New Yorker, among the show's fans. A Bronx Tale isn't the most innovative show I've ever seen but it offers a good time.

Its story about a kid growing up during the '50s and '60s in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx, where his loyalties are torn between his father, a bus driver; and Sonny, the local mob boss, is familiar because this is a tale that's been told several times.

Chazz Palminteri, who wrote the book for the show, began performing a semi-autobiographical version as a one-man show in Los Angeles in the late '80s, brought that to off-Broadway in 1989, played the role of Sonny in the film four years later and then did another solo version on Broadway in 2007 and took it out on a national tour (click here to read the complete history).

The new musical version hits every plot point, including the kid's teen romance with a black girl, which carries echoes of West Side Story. Everything else is in place too. the show's score by Alan Menken evokes the doo-wop of the 1950s and the R&B of the early '60s. Glenn Slater's lyrics aren't as clever as they're pretending to be but they get the job done. And Sergio Trujillo's dances make all the right moves (click here to read an interview with him).

The directing duties have been split between the very different sensibilities of De Niro and stage vet Jerry Zaks but the double-teaming has somehow worked and they've managed to land everyone in their 30-member cast on the same page. 

The sweet-faced Bobby Conte Thornton (click here for a Q&A with him) is enormously appealing as the conflicted protagonist, whose given name is, like Palminteri's, Calogero but who goes by the nickname C. And Ariana DeBose sings the hell out of the songs she's been given as C's love interest Jane.

But there's no doubt that the show's MVP is Nick Cordero who plays the charismatic mobster Sonny. Cordero won a Tony nomination for playing a similar role in Bullets Over Broadway and the finely honed swagger he displays here makes it easy to understand why C is so enthralled by him.

The show attempts to offer some substance and complexity by having C's good-guy dad oppose his interracial relationship with Jane, while Sonny, a certified bad guy who kills a man before the opening number is finished, supports it.  But Isherwood is basically right. A Bronx Tale is comfort food. And that may be why I liked it. 

Those with more refined palates might argue that such a show, no matter how competently done, is taking up space that could go to a work that advances the art form.  But what if you're not in the mood for the umami of a form-advancing show but just want a well made one?  Cause, to be honest, given the past few weeks, comfort is just what I've been hungry for. 

"A Bronx Tale" Well Told

In the tortoise and the hare nostalgia derby between the 1950s and the 1960s, the '50s is pulling ahead. At least on Broadway. Memories of the '60s may be flashier but for the past two years, Jersey Boys has been packing in audiences willing to pay up to $350 for a premium ticket to relive the behind-the-music story of the hit '50s group The Four Seasons. Grease, despite so-so reviews, is playing to nearly full houses of people joyously cheering on Danny, Sandy and the rest of the ducktailed and bobby-soxed gang at Rydell High. And now comes A Bronx Tale, Chazz Palminteri’s one-man memory play about growing up under the dual protection, and competing loyalties, of his bus driver father and a local Mafiosi in the outer-borough neighborhood made famous by another boy group, Dion and the Belmonts. To my great surprise, A Bronx Tale turns out to be my favorite.

I say surprise because one-man shows can be tricky. I knew better than to even mention seeing this one to my husband K, who is unabashedly biased against them. My frequent theatergoing buddy Bill agreed to go with me but I wasn't so excited about seeing A Bronx Tale myself. I had seen, and liked well enough, the 1993 movie starring Robert De Niro as the dad and Palminteri as the mobster but I hadn't seen the off-Broadway stage production when it played in 1989 and I couldn't imagine how Palminteri was going to reduce the movie’s 20-plus characters to a cast of one. The answer: with an engaging vivacity that fills the stage.

Palminteri is a gifted raconteur and he switches from character to character with the natural ease of everyone's favorite storyteller at the family reunion confident that he can make his listeners enjoy his tale as much as he does. And he gets just the right amount of support from Jerry Zak's subtle direction and James Noone’s simple but evocative set. The show reminded me at times of Billy Crystal's one-man memoir about his boyhood covering roughly the same time period. During both shows, I could almost hear the audience purring with pleasure. Which made me think about why we've fallen so under the spell of a decade once considered uptight and colorless when compared to the Technicolor pyrotechnics of the next one.

In recent years works like Phillip Roth's "American Pastoral" and Twyla Tharp's Movin' Out have cast a rueful eye on the turbulence of the post-Kennedy assassination era of the1960s and that seems to have deepened our affection for the tortoise-like calm of the earlier decade. We know that the fifties weren't as placid as we now fantasize—there was McCarthyism and racial segregation and blatant sexism and homophobia—but we find some undefined comfort in thinking of it as an idyllic time. A Bronx Tale profits from that longing for the innocence and ignorance of our childhood years. Sure, the jokes are old-fashioned and the storyline familiar but in Palminteri's hands, it's a tale well told and one that I was happy to listen to.