✭✩✩✩✩
<b>by Steve Galluccio, directed by Gordon McCall
Mirvish Productions, Elgin Theatre, Toronto
January --February 23, 2003
</b>
In 2000 <i>Mambo Italiano</i> in Michel Tremblay's French translation became such a success in Montreal it was taken on a province-wide tour. The Centaur Theatre's production of Steve Galluccio's original English script became the biggest hit in its 33-year history. The film of the play, touted as the next <i>My Big Fat Greek Wedding,</i> arrives in June this year<i>.</i>
Must be good, eh? Not on the evidence of the Centaur production the Mirvishes have brought here. It is, in fact, embarrassingly bad and an ordeal to sit through. The audience response was lukewarm at best. Montreal and Toronto must be culturally farther apart than we imagined.
Though supposed contemporary, the show feels like a rejected 1970s sitcom pilot performed live. Closeted thirtysomethings Angelo and Nino have been living happily together in Montreal for a year. Then Angelo gets the idea to come out to his old school Italian parents. Once Nino's mother finds out, she and Angelo's mother decide that all the boys need are nice Italian girls to put them "straight" and arrange a party.
There is nothing about the plot, characters or dialogue you haven't seen a hundred times before. The Italian parents, when not loving their pasta or mistaking their saints, scream abuse at each other. Unmarried women are man-hungry "bimbos." Angelo accepts his gayness in a speech so cliché-ridden it seems like parody. Only the few scenes of the parents' one-upmanship have any comic spark.
The actors' relentless shouting and mugging make this parade of caricatures unbearably annoying. Television today has better shows about both gays and Italians. Why pay for low-quality faux-TV in the theatre?
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>Eye Weekly</i> 2003-01-23.
Photo: Joseph Gallaccio, Andreas Apergis and Penny Mancuso. ©2003 Centaur Theatre.
<b>2003-01-23</b>
<b>Mambo Italiano</b>