Theatre in Review: Italian American Reconciliation (The Flea Theater)

	Robert Farrior. Photo: Scott Aronow

At the Flea the other night, I kept thinking of Billie Dawn's famous line from Born Yesterday: "Are you one of those talkers, or would you be interested in a little action?" Nobody in Italian-American Reconciliation has any interest in action, no matter how much they insist otherwise. They're born orators, all of them, and no romantic attachments can compete with their true loves: the sounds of their own voices. Coming off his screenplay for Moonstruck, John Patrick Shanley cooked up another minestrone of frustrated passions; his unhappy lovers are their own worst enemies, dedicated to explicating their self-created agonies in exhaustive detail. This 1988 comedy is an opera without music, a series of interconnected arias delivered by characters who, by the time they get to the bedroom, must surely need a nice long nap, given the amount of wind expended.

For example, there's Huey, who is so poleaxed with frustrated desire for his ex-wife, Janice, that he has taken to wearing breeches and colonial-era shirts in a misguided bid for self-confidence. In addition to looking like a cast member of 1776, he writes masochistic poems. ("When I get tired a bein' cool/I slam this bat against the back a my skull/And curse the stars I see.") He goes everywhere in this anachronistic getup, carrying a manual typewriter, and, stuffed in his pants, a music box that plays "Nessun Dorma." Surprisingly, he has a girlfriend, a sensible diner waitress named Teresa. Unsurprisingly, she wants to break up with him.

Why Huey wants to reunite with Janice, who killed his dog in cold blood and, for good measure, took a few shots at him, is unclear. While he heads off to dump Teresa, he sends his best friend, Aldo, a suave Mama's boy with relationship issues of his own, to prime the pump with Janice. (Huey is afraid of Janice, understandably so, given her history of pet manslaughter and attempted assault.) Correctly recognizing this as a terrible idea, Aldo comes up with an even worse plan, vowing to seduce Janice -- who, by the way, still has a gun.

Of course, nothing in this ill-advised roundelay goes as it should, with everyone explaining their bizarre motivations with remarkably overripe dialogue that is one part Little Italy, one part Neil Simon, and happy to make use of a dozen words when three would do. Whimsy is the prevailing mood: Teresa, who has no use for Janice, says, "She should live on a black mountain and drink out of a skull." Aldo tells Janice, "Your eyes look like vampire vulture monster fiend eyes...Sometimes when you smile, I expect to see, like, fangs fall down over your lower lip." Aldo, furious at May, a widow and professional kibitzer, grouses, "You women always stick together. There was a time in our society when the woman stuck by the man till the ship went down and there were no more bubbles." Trying to explain why she married Huey, Janice says, "I really don't remember. I remember walkin' up the aisle. I remember lookin' over and seein' him there and thinking he looked like a waiter."

Working with an uneven cast, director Austin Pendleton struggles to put some urgency and conviction into these convoluted, garrulous doings. Wade McCollum, an actor who continually surprises, manages to make Huey's distress palpable even when behaving ridiculously and/or going on about reclaiming his strength as a man; he is the production's indispensable grounding feature. As Aldo, Robert Farrior looks ready to star in The Tony Bennett Story, but he has to put up with a string of jokes about his mother in the audience, a running gag that quickly loses its appeal. Mia Gentile is solid as Teresa, who plans to drop Huey, executes a U-turn when he cuts her loose, and then vanishes from the play. Linda Manning's Janice is not the menace described in the script; rather, she comes off as ill-tempered and unlikable, making Huey's infatuation with her seem borderline insane. (If you can buy her defense of animal cruelty, I guess you can believe anything.) My guess is neither she nor Pendleton could get a handle on the character, and I don't blame them.

Mary Testa is her usual professional self as Aunt May, who is tasked with being the play's voice of reason, and she does well with a lengthy digression, but I've never seen her get so few laughs. (Her advice to Aldo: "If some women has [sic] done bad to you, see that it is them that did it. Write their names down in a book if you want. Glue their pictures next to their names and cross Xs over their faces, and don't mistake them for all the other girls." She should get her own podcast!)

For a play that unfolds in several locations, Scott Aronow has devised a practical, yet evocative set that takes in Huey's place, Teresa's diner, and the exterior of Janice's house. The paper lanterns in the colors of the Italian flag are an especially festive touch. Annie Garrett-Larsen's lighting gives each location its distinct look. (One quibble: The wall sconce on Janice's balcony is so bright that, when she stands next to it, it obscures her face.) Ariel Pellman's costumes are solid, although I couldn't quite tell if the play is meant to be set in 1988 or 2025.

The play is informed by a certain geniality, but, as with such works as Psychopathia Sexualis, Romantic Poetry, The Portuguese Kid, and, to an extent, Brooklyn Laundry, Shanley's peculiarly whimsical, loquacious approach to romantic comedy can wear one out under the weight of its verbiage. Can't anybody around here get some action? --David Barbour