On & Off Broadway

‘A Bronx Tale’

Review by Elyse Trevers

Posted

Doesn’t this show feel familiar? Haven’t we seen this before? Well, actually not officially, but A Bronx Tale, which recently opened at The Longacre Theater, bears an awful lot of resemblance to West Side Story and The Jersey Boys, with perhaps a touch of Hairspray and a bunch of other shows thrown in. To be fair, Chazz Palminteri’s story was a one-man play that was later adapted into a movie so his story isn’t new.

Two lovers, a young white man and an African American woman, frantically search for each other on the rough streets of New York beneath a setting of fire escapes. When the blacks and whites fight, it wouldn’t have been surprising to hear the cast suddenly break out into “Gee Officer Krupke” or maybe even “Big Girls Don't Cry.”

If only they did. This is not to say that A Bronx Tale is bad — much of it is pleasant — it's just that it feels mostly unoriginal. A nine-year-old boy, Calogero, later nicknamed “C,” witnesses a mob hit on a Bronx street. Instinct tells him to remain silent when asked to pick the suspect out of a lineup. This deed earns him the lifelong gratitude of Sonny, the hit man (a fine Nick Cordero). He grows up torn between Sonny and his hard-working parents. Yet at what are meant to be emotional moments in the show, we don't particularly care. Part of our disinterest is in the overuse of phrases. The words to “Look to Your Heart” advice from “C’s” father are repeated over and over again throughout the musical.


This blandness is despite the music by Alan Mencken who does provide us with a particularly catchy tune, “I Like It,” and the direction by Broadway veteran Jerry Zacks and Robert DeNiro. (Yes, that Roberto DeNiro.) Hudson Loverro as the young man Calogero and Robert H. Blake as his father give particularly compelling performances. The grown “C” (Bobby Conte Thornton) doubles as narrator, recalling Belmont Avenue, the colorful characters and particularly Sonny.

For what it's worth, the audience seemed to enjoy itself. For my money, I'd wait for the next revival of West Side Story.