Aisle View: Park Slope Memoirs

There are interesting plot strands in Meghan Kennedy’s Napoli, Brooklyn, the new Roundabout offering at the Laura Pels. Too many, perhaps; the flavors in this melting pot kitchen sink drama, which starts with an Italian immigrant mama slicing an onion, don’t quite combine into a satisfying dish. But numerous parts—from the first, when said mama prays to said onion—are individually tasty, giving drama-hungry playgoers something to chew on along the way.

Kennedy—an alumnus of the Roundabout’s Underground, where her Too Much, Too Much, Too Many was produced in 2013—has set her play in Park Slope. Not the high-priced Park Slope of today, but the decaying immigrant neighborhood back in late 1960. Theatergoers of—as they say—a certain age might immediately guess that a life-changing, front page news event will occur at or around intermission, and they will be proven correct.

Luda (Alyssa Bresnahan) is under a good deal of internal pressure, having lost her faith and no wonder. Her three daughters are beset by their own problems. The eldest, Vita (Elise Kibler), has been packed off to a convent following a pre-curtain family argument; she has a broken nose, broken ribs, and a busted knee, and you know what that means. The youngest, high school student Cesca (Jordyn DiNatale), has just cut off her hair and dreams of stowing away to France with her best girlfriend where they can smoke French cigarettes and live free; and you know what that means. Middle daughter Tina (Lilli Kay), is silent, slow, and doesn’t talk back. She slaves away in a menial factory job earning a low but steady salary, which makes her Papa’s good girl.

Papa Nic (Michael Rispoli), meanwhile, is a street-paver from Napoli—the one in Italy—with a smoldering, tyrannical temperament; and you know what that means. So tyrannical that he makes Eddie Carbone look like Ward Cleaver. [Note: the latter was America’s favorite TV dad of the 1950s. We were going to use America’s favorite TV dad of the 1980s, so as not to date ourselves, but that fellow’s name brings different connotations just now.]

There is also a thoroughly decent neighborhood Irish butcher/widower, Albert Duffy (Erik Lochtefeld), and I suppose you can guess what that means. His daughter Connie (Juliet Brett) plays an Indecent scene with Cesca. [Note: That is to say, the scene is not indecent; it simply parallels a memorable scene in the current Broadway play of that title.] The last character is Celia (Shirine Babb), a black factory worker who befriends Tina and teaches her to read. When Celia’s husband is killed in the aforementioned front page intermission event, she temporarily moves in with the family—and Nic refuses to address her directly, his eyes glued to the black woman’s shoes.

Now, some of these story strains are quite engaging. The problem in Napoli, Brooklyn—not the on-stage problem(s), but the problem from the seats—is that there are too many of them stuffed into one story. A whole soap opera season’s worth of crises packed into two hours, which make too many disparate strands to successfully juggle. Yes, this family maelstrom might in fact be based on an actual Park Slope/Italian clan; likely, the playwright—who has dedicated the play to her mother—has drawn on family tales. But the poor theatergoer is drawn in too many directions to focus on the heart of the play. Which is, precisely, what?

Bresnahan is impressive as the mother, holding the play together. (There is a disturbing moment with a cigarette which does not ring true; the actress, at least at the performance attended, seemed to ignore this altogether.) DiNatale gives an especially spirited performance as the youngest daughter, although the play continually pulls focus from her. Kibler does a good job as the beaten-but-not-defeated daughter, while Babb adds resonance as the factory friend. Lochtefeld, who was memorable in the recent Small Mouth Sounds (as the foreigner carrying a child’s backpack), is very good as the caring butcher. Rispoli, alas, has a hard time making much of Nic, but I’d likely fault the writing rather than the actor.

The play is a coproduction with the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, directed by that group’s artistic director Gordon Edelstein. The Long Wharf design team has been retained, complete with a Eugene Lee set that provides its own jolt and period costumes by the venerable Jane Greenwood. Three of the eight actors—Bresnahan, DiNatale and Babb—are heldover from the February production.

Playwright Kennedy gives us a whole lot of story, and quite a bit of Napoli, Brooklyn is compelling. But there just seems to be too much pasta in the pot.

Meghan Kennedy’s Napoli, Brooklyn opened June 27, 2017 and continues until September 3 at the Laura Pels Theatre