A Bronx Tale Reviews
A Bronx Tale Reviews
Yankeefan007
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/20/04
#1A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 6:42pm
http://www.broadway.com/gen/general.aspx?ci=555081
I didn't listen to their spiel. Did they like it?
Yankeefan007
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/20/04
#2re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 6:47pm
AMNY gave it 2.5 stars.
"Palminteri's acting is often compelling, but there is a major problem – all of his characters sound exactly the same! Still, it helps that director Jerry Zaks has provided a simple but very focused staging. And unlike Billy Crystal's "700 Sundays," which was over three hours long, "Bronx Tale" lasts a neat, clean 95 minutes."
http://www.amny.com/entertainment/am-bronx1025,0,7750544.story
#3re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 7:12pmWord of Mouth was a Rave.
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
#4re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 7:22pm
Variety is Mixed:
"Watching Chazz Palminteri travel back to his childhood stomping ground on the corner of 187th and Belmont Avenue, New York, is not unlike listening in on a bunch of Italians as they wax nostalgic, during a game of bocci or an afternoon at the barbershop, about the old neighborhood and the colorful characters that once populated it. Charming or chilling, the recollections in "A Bronx Tale" are touched by affection, sentimentality and the poignant distance of time..."
..........
"Palminteri has an appealing, easy way with an anecdote, a fine ear for the macho rhythms of Italo-American vernacular and a good eye for character detail, even if his constant gesticulating, shifting body language and malleable facial expressions do seem forcefully cranked up to make a talky text more physically dynamic."
..........
"But despite the detail and agility of his performance, Palminteri's writing feels trapped here in a form that prohibits it from fully coming alive. The arc of the play is well shaped, taking C through formative years with twin father figures, his blossoming confidence as a young man in the protective shadow of a local big gun, his first romance, his ideological awakening to social injustice and the bittersweet loss that brings him closer again to his father. Yet despite its origin as a stage piece, the show plays like a distilled short story or screenplay rather than something that functions as a virtuoso stage vehicle for a single performer."
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935210.html?categoryid=33&cs=1
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
Updated On: 10/25/07 at 07:22 PM
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
#5re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 7:27pm
The Associated Press is a Rave:
"Broadway has not hampered the considerable storytelling abilities of Chazz Palminteri.
"A Bronx Tale" (seen off-Broadway in 1989 and as a movie four years later), works just fine at the Walter Kerr Theatre, where Palminteri's enormously entertaining one-man show opened Thursday."
..........
"Theater these days is awash in one-person shows, but what makes this one particularly effective is its ability to conjure up a specific time and place, not to mention a parade of appealing characters, even if some are a little less than reputable.
"A Bronx Tale" is a coming-of-age story, the journey of a young man named Cologio from childhood into his late teens and all the colorful folks he meets along the way."
..........
"...Director Jerry Zaks moves things along quickly, capitalizing on Palminteri's conversational, easygoing manner.
But then the actor looks right at home on the Kerr stage, decorated with a simple setting (designed by James Noone) that includes a corner street sign, the stoop of the family's tenement and the facade of a bar called the Chez Joey, a watering hole where all the wise guys hung out. It's the perfect environment for Palminteri's vibrant, warmhearted saga and the people who populate his memories."
http://www.modbee.com/2041/story/103199.html
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
Updated On: 10/25/07 at 07:27 PM
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
#6re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 11:08pm
Talkin' Broadway is Mixed-to-Negative:
"When planning your next subway day trip, you may want to cross off your list the final few stops on the northbound 2, 5, B, and D. Nothing against the MTA, mind you, but the stations flanking the east and west sides of Bronx Park come fairly close to 187th Street and Belmont Avenue, and given the stories spun about that intersection in A Bronx Tale, which just opened at the Walter Kerr, you might want to steer clear.
Granted, Chazz Palminteri's one-man memoir is set in a very different time (the early 60s), giving one no necessary cause to believe that racketeering, murder, and racism are still plagues on the streets of his cherished childhood haunt. Yet so effectively does he depict the dangers of growing up in that mob-suffused neighborhood that the grain of uncertain fear lingers in your mind long after the 90-minute show has concluded. If only everything else in A Bronx Tale were as vivid."
..........
"With only moderate modifications of voice and even subtler changes of physicality, Palminteri displays only two modes of characterization regardless of which of the dozen or so characters he's ostensibly embodying: himself as stand-up comic or himself stand-up tragedian. The former is in charge in the earliest scenes, which are full of quick-hit portrayals more appropriate for a semi-stereotypical sitcom than a passionate slice of personal life. As the show progresses, his reminiscences gradually take on a heaviness that too readily presages the climactic outcome (which is surprising only for the ineffective mock-cinematic way in which it's presented, complete with slow-motion).
As I didn't see A Bronx Tale the first time around, I can't say that this sameness has always been a problem, or if it's become more pronounced as Palminteri has settled into his film persona. But very little of the obvious love for the setting or its quirky inhabitants comes through in Palminteri's performance as it exists now, which would be nearly perfect if he could shift more of that debilitating weight to the opening and more of the extraneous lightness to the finale."
..........
"He [Chazz Palminteri]... ends the evening downplaying his influence, and that of so much in his early life: "You could ask anybody from my neighborhood and they'll tell you, this is just another Bronx tale." If anyone shouldn't believe that, it's Palminteri - but too much of this A Bronx Tale feels like that's exactly what he's trying to prove."
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
Updated On: 10/25/07 at 11:08 PM
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
#7re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 11:11pm
The New York Times with Charles Isherwood reviewing is Very Positive:
"Mr. Palminteri’s stage memoir, a semi-autobiographical account of growing up under the loving protection of an Italian-American crime kingpin, had its debut in Los Angeles in 1989 and was later produced Off Broadway. In 1993 it became a movie directed by Robert De Niro, with a full cast including Mr. De Niro and Joe Pesci. Mr. Palminteri took the role of the big boss, Sonny.
He has subsequently appeared in dozens of Hollywood films, perhaps most memorably in Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway,” for which he received an Oscar nomination. But Mr. Palminteri left a sliver of his heart back in the Bronx, specifically on the corner of Belmont Avenue and 187th Street, the intersection where it all began. That’s where we find him as the lights rise again on “A Bronx Tale,” which retains sufficient heart, spice and humor nearly 20 years after its debut."
..........
"Mr. Palminteri is now 55, an age at which you might think it would be hard to muster the energy to play more than a dozen characters in the course of 90 minutes, not to mention the innocence to play a 9-year-old boy caught between the rigid moral vision of an upright, bus-driving father and the canny wisdom of a powerful capo.
But while Mr. Palminteri’s expressive, fleshy face bears more than a few traces of the passing years, he is in trim, energetic shape. As he strides across the stage with a lively gait, nimbly sliding from one role to another, he exudes a moment-to-moment engagement that suggests that this revival is not a lazy ego trip but a rejuvenating act of faith in the complementary powers of acting and storytelling."
..........
"“A Bronx Tale” loses some of its narrative momentum after a confrontation between Sonny and Lorenzo. The second half of the show, in which our hero discovers the charms of the female sex, and the limits of his father’s uprightness, is more scattered and less compelling, although Mr. Palminteri and his director, the veteran Jerry Zaks, never allow the energy level to flag for long."
..........
"“A Bronx Tale” may not possess the emotional breadth or sophistication of “The Sopranos.” But, appealingly, it lacks that show’s brutality too. I was always a bit revolted by the clinical realism of the bloodletting in “The Sopranos,” which made me feel soiled for taking a sympathetic interest in the personal foibles of the men perpetrating it. Mr. Palminteri may present his childhood hero through the worshipful eyes of youth, but even the nicest mobsters can benefit from a little fairy-tale airbrushing here and there."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/theater/reviews/26bron.html
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
#8re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 11:16pm
Theatermania is a Rave:
"Chazz Palminteri deserves boundless praise for bringing A Bronx Tale, the 95-minute solo piece about growing up around local gangsters at 187th Street and Belmont Avenue in his beloved borough, to Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre nearly two decades after debuting it Off-Broadway. Cooking on all burners, Palminteri plays all the characters in the story of two unforgettable men from his childhood and how profoundly they influenced the man he became: his bus-driver father Lorenzo and a mobster called Sonny, who's honed his underworld skills by combining street smarts with a close reading of Niccolo Machiavelli. (In the expanded 1993 film version of A Bronx Tale, it's made clear that Sonny -- played by Palminteri -- read The Prince during a 10-year prison term.)
In most stories where two men vie for the mind of a young man -- particularly when they are nominally good influence versus bad - only one prevails. It's a huge and unexpected plus in Palminteri's play that he understands he benefited from both men through the years he spent in their separate wakes. Although Lorenzo and Sonny have an early confrontation over young Cologio Lorenzo Romano Alfredo Palminteri -- whom Sonny nicknames "C" -- Lorenzo wisely curbs his disapproval while his son is shepherded around as something of a protected gangland mascot. Lorenzo plainly understands that his son is intelligent enough to absorb the best and leave the rest offered by the not unkind though sometimes brutal Sonny."
..........
"Talented men recalling their upbringing in bildungsroman-like theater pieces can be a tour de force, as Billy Crystal, standing in front of a replica of his home, demonstrated two seasons ago in 700 Sundays. Now Palminteri does it, thanks in part to Jerry Zaks' detailed bravura direction. Palminteri -- whom cynics might think has taken the Broadway step due to a flagging Hollywood career -- acts, or reenacts, his past with precision, gusto, and honest emotion."
..........
"When the young Palminteri was being gently guided by his affectionate father, he asked, "Do I have talent, Daddy?" Lorenzo said yes and then added, "Just remember what I'm telling you: The saddest thing is wasted talent. Don't waste yours." In A Bronx Tale, Palminteri isn't wasting one speck of it."
http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/11923
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#9re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 11:16pm
Theatremania is Positive:
"Talented men recalling their upbringing in bildungsroman-like theater pieces can be a tour de force, as Billy Crystal, standing in front of a replica of his home, demonstrated two seasons ago in 700 Sundays. Now Palminteri does it, thanks in part to Jerry Zaks' detailed bravura direction. Palminteri -- whom cynics might think has taken the Broadway step due to a flagging Hollywood career -- acts, or reenacts, his past with precision, gusto, and honest emotion.
But A Bronx Tale is also more than tour de force, because underlying Palminteri's every word and gesture is palpable love and gratitude. It is appreciation for Sonny and his father that ultimately makes Palminteri's unsentimentalized recollections shiny as a gem Sonny could have flashed in his pinky ring."
http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/11923
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
#10re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 11:25pm
Newark Star-Ledger is Very Negative (about the show and the Olive Garden)
"...Palminteri jump-started his career back in 1989 when he wrote and performed "A Bronx Tale" as a one-man show in Los Angeles and off-Broadway. Palminteri crafted the screenplay for and also appeared in the subsequent film version starring Robert De Niro, who directed it.
Now the writer-performer makes his Broadway bow in "A Bronx Tale," which opened Thursday at the Walter Kerr Theatre for a limited run likely to be more limited than he intends."
..........
"...Palminteri portrays them all [all the characters] -- and, disappointingly, all pretty much the same way. No chameleon, the performer scarcely modifies his husky tones when he speaks as these characters. Dressed in a gray suit, blue oxford shirt and brown shoes, Palminteri assumes broad physical stances when he depicts them. The effect tends to be cartoonish."
..........
"Probably when Palminteri first mounted this material, it seemed considerably fresher than it does today. Possibly he was more flexible then as a performer, too. Here and now on Broadway, "A Bronx Tale" is merely a warmed-up pile of meatballs dished out by a tired server."
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/arts/index.ssf/2007/10/chazzs_tired_tale_earns_bronx.html
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
#11re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/25/07 at 11:53pm
When planning your next subway day trip, you may want to cross off your list the final few stops on the northbound 2, 5, B, and D.
Actually, the B train doesn't go any further north than 145th Street. It never even makes it to the Bronx. Oops!
eta: Or double oops. As someone pointed out, I was wrong. If I went to the Bronx for anything other than picking up UPS packages, I might have known better!
Updated On: 10/26/07 at 11:53 PM
#12re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/26/07 at 10:12am
i enjoyed the play a lot! while i feel the beginning is rather slow, by the end i was completely riveted!
didn't half these critics say that Jay Johnson's show was good? no wonder they're not impressed by this! there are no puppets
#13re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/26/07 at 10:22am
I attended the premiere last night and got a chance to say hello to Robert DeNiro and wife, Harvery Keitel, and Joey Panz. Furio from the Soprano's was in couple rows in back of us, sorry can't remember the actors name.
I loved the play and I thought for a man of age 55, Chazz did a superb job acting the 13 characters in the show. He was amazing!
Feel the Love - Les Mis
#14re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/26/07 at 10:45am
Clive Barnes of the New York Post gives the show 2 out of 4 Stars:
"HE saunters past his stoop and lamp post, past the signs for 187th Street and Belmont Avenue. We know we're in The Bronx because the guy with the sharp suit and slicked-back Brylcreemed hair is Chazz Palminteri.
Many artists use their memories as a jumping-off point for their art - but few have gotten as much mileage out of that leap as Palminteri, whose one-man, 18-character play, "A Bronx Tale," opened last night on Broadway..."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10262007/entertainment/theater/a_bronx_cheer_for__all_that_ch.htm
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
#15re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/26/07 at 10:52am
I like that Family Guy episode where they go see the one man show and all the guy's voices sound the same and then the three characters the guy impersonated show up and they all have the same voice.
Just mentionin'.
(I enjoyed this too, as much as I am able to enjoy this sort of show, but Jay Johnson was one so wonderful! Best one man thing I've ever seen, which isn't many).
yr ronin,
joey
joey
#16re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 10/26/07 at 12:31pm
Newsday is Mixed:
"The movie was a lovely success for De Niro and catapulted Palminteri into a character-actor, tough-guy career in more than 50 films.
So we understand why De Niro was drawn to the vivid New York story.
Why Palminteri and his play are back - this time on big-ticket Broadway - is far less apparent.
"A Bronx Tale," which opened last night at the Walter Kerr Theatre, is a walk down memory lane of what was already a walk down memory lane..."
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/stage/ny-evthe5430434oct26,0,2450286.story
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
UnderTheHill
Chorus Member Joined: 10/1/07
#17re: A Bronx Tale Reviews
Posted: 11/5/07 at 3:26pm
I saw the show on Friday evening, and have to say that if you enjoy the movie, you will enjoy the show, especially if you are New Yorker. All around us were not-your-usual theatre crowd, these were people who grew up in the same neighborhood and/or the same era as the show depicts, and they all loved the show because it brought them back to a particular time in their lives and fully related to the storytelling.
Personally, I enjoyed the show a great deal.
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