OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS
By Joe DiPietro. Directed by Paula Ramsdell. Set design by Sarah Sullivan. Costumes by Kristin Loeffler. Lighting by Craig Brennan. With Bob Colonna, Ellen Colton, Sheilagh Cruickshank, Bill Mootos, Dick Santos, and Bobbie Steinbach. At the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Wednesday through Sunday through April 14.

The critic who dubbed Joe DiPietro the “Italian Neil Simon” did him no favors. Whereas Simon’s latest play, The Dinner Party, is something of a dud despite its Broadway run, DiPietro’s trendy depictions of twentysomethings awash in angst have made him an Off Broadway favorite. The musical for which he wrote the book and lyrics, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, has been ensconced there for years, as well at Boston’s Stuart Street Theatre. And the endearing Lyric Stage Company of Boston production of DiPietro’s Over the River and Through the Woods, a play that also had a healthy run in New York, is guaranteed to win the playwright new fans.

Besides, though the characters in Over the River revel in their Italian heritage, unfurling slogans like “Tengo familia” (“I have a family,” in all its primal connotations), the play pushes the universal buttons. I mean, have you ever had a Friday-night meal in a Jewish home or Christmas dinner with an Irish Catholic family? The love that’s ladled out along with the home-made tomato sauce at the Gianellis’ in DiPietro’s play, as well as the guilt that’s heaped on the sandwiches of leftovers to take home, differs little from the menus of immigrant families all over America.

Over the River begins when Nick Cristano, a single 27-year-old marketing manager in New York, is offered a promotion with his company that’s contingent on his relocating to Seattle. He crosses the river to Hoboken to break the news to his four grandparents, the Cristanos and the Gianellis, with whom he spends every Sunday. But the folks in New Jersey have not forgiven Nick’s parents for leaving them behind when they retired to Fort Lauderdale, or his sister for taking a job out West. You can bet they are not going to let Nick leave the East Coast without a struggle. Enter Caitlin O’Hare, the unmarried niece of one of the nanas’ bridge partners, to solve two problems: Nick’s loneliness, assumed by the grandparents on account of his unmarried status, and the projected move. She’s brought to dinner in a blind set-up about which Nick has been given no warning.

The hilarity of the nonstop gags in act one transcends the TV sit-com plot because DiPietro has such a good ear for the cadences of ordinary conversation, with all its inconsistencies and bloopers. The Cristanos and the Gianellis have been family, as well as next-door neighbors, for decades as a result of the marriage between their children. Nick’s exasperation at the stop-and-start discussion patterns and the unspoken words that are perfectly understood within the cabal fuels the humor, but the audience’s clear recognition of the familial code makes the play even funnier. The grandparents’ combined strategy for coming up with answers during a round of Trivial Pursuit, which includes recalling the name of a famous author by its association to someone’s sister-in-law’s friend, translates into terrific stage comedy.

Nick fumes, the grandparents scheme, but to the playwright’s credit, no easy outs are offered to solve the eternal conflict between the generations — which is particularly poignant here because of the culture shift. By act two, however, the play falters as DiPietro’s tight structure devolves into a chronology aimed at tying up the conclusion and the tone changes. Director Paula Ramsdell paces the show at a dead run to good effect, steering the actors over the roadblocks of clichés about grandmothers who ricochet between the kitchen and 7:30 p.m. Mass at the local parish. The quartet of actors cast as the grandparents — Bob Colonna and Bobbie Steinbach as Frank and Aida Gianelli and Dick Santos and Ellen Colton as Nunzio and Emma Cristano — have caught the rhythm of both the dialogue and its subtext of resentment at being pushed aside. Steinbach and Colton propel the grandmothers beyond the outlines, particularly when they transcend the present to reveal themselves as they were as young brides. Santos and Colonna convey the pride of men who insist on denying their declining powers.

Bill Mootos, as Nick, carries the show in his transformation from a man child who takes the family nurturing for granted to an adult who finally understands what he must lose by leaving. His sense of timing serves him well on the double takes while allowing him to shift mood in the monologues that underline Nick’s plea for forgiveness. Be it Simon’s Brooklyn coming-of-age in Brighton Beach Memoirs or DiPietro’s charming reminiscence, the story is ever the same as the young battle the old to escape from the nest and its legacy of Old World customs.

Issue Date: March 22-29, 2001