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A ROOM OF MY OWN Send This Review to a Friend
Plays about dysfunctional families are nothing new, but at least the screwed-up Italian family in “A Room of My Own,” an Abingdon Theatre Company presentation set in the late 1970s, is an amusing one. Playwright Charles Messina, who directs his own work, looks upon his entourage with perspective and humor, provided by Ralph Macchio as Carl Morelli, a narrator asking us to reflect with him on the household in which he grew up and as an adult harboring deep-rooted memories.
Macchio—yes, the Macchio who still lives on in our memories of him as “The Karate Kid”—gives an appealing performance as the adult Carl. In the flashback scenes, Little Carl, aspiring to be a writer, is played spiritedly by Nico Bustamante.
The family, whose members probably would be reduced to being mute if not for the F word, lives in a tiny Greenwich Village walk-up. Joli Tribuzio, with a razor-sharp tongue, is a hard-driving, cursing dynamo as the wife and mother Dotti Morelli. Her husband Peter (Johnny Tommaro) is jobless. Mario Cantone has a showy role as Carl’s Uncle Jackie. Kendra Jain is colorful, to say the least, as Carl’s sister Jeannie. Liza Vann appears as more sophisticated Jean Morelli, Carl’s aunt who has been estranged from the family.
There is a blistering secret involving amends that Jean makes, and it is one of those actions that should have been revealed, but Dotty connives to keep it hidden, with an ultimately sad result.
Thanks to Macchio’s performance as well as to the smooth writing, the play succeeds in moving in and out of time without being jarring. There are occasional moments in which the cast members freeze in stop-action, while the grown Carl fills in comments. The effect is often wistful, sometimes penetrating, but always capturing our interest as we survey the family under the microscope from different angles.
The play, which runs a tight 95 minutes without intermission, is often uproariously funny, with the laugh lines and situations all the more amusing because the cast members go through their paces seriously. Relationships may be messed up, but the characters engage at full force, without moping. Only the narrator gets to indulge in perspective. At the June Havoc Theatre, 312 West 36th Street. Reviewed February 26, 2016.
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