My Name Is Antonino Calderone is a play based on a book based on a true story. This alone should be enough to get you interested.
To say it's about the Mafia (Or the Cosa Nostra, as it is referred to in the piece) should make it even more appealing. It's a fascinating reconstruction - or at least a rendering of the sort-of-confession Calderone offered to the authorities in a one-man monologue. Intriguing to say the least.
As fascinating as it sounds, I'd like to point out several things.
One, the play is only two shows old, tonight was its third and it shows. They're making continuous edits to the script, having gone so far as to cut (at least) twenty-five minutes from the show, which currently runs at two hours, plus interval. It's a really nice thing to have the Director tell you that beforehand, because really, I would have been put off by The Actor having a script before him.
Two, cor-blimey there are a lot of words in there. There's a lot of clever detail and there's a lot of Italian - to be perfectly honest, two things you'd expect in a piece about the Mafia, but that's neither here nor there - which, with a piece as heavy as this, gets a little bit lost. That's not to say that The Actor doesn't attempt to convey every single word, but... with so much to say, and without the pace slowing down too much, we found ourselves zoning out occasionally.
Three, the second half was far more satisfying than the first. It was more anecdotal, more satisfying and I, for one, was certainly more gripped. The Actor settled into his role, and he seemed, for what it's worth, to find some kind of empathy with a character he is culturally separated from. It takes a while, obviously, to find a niche when retelling the story of a man who was very, very real, without becoming a parody, and though The Actor took a while to settle into it, he succeeded with the task remarkably.
As it is, I think with polish, My Name Is Antonino Calderone will be a pretty good show. There's no doubt that the pacing needs sorting out, and that the script needs to be more fine-tuned, but I have no doubt that it will be. After all, that's what Previews are for, right? (And hey, it wasn't bad for £4.50)
My Name Is Antonino Calderone; Still in Previews
Star Rating: ★★★
(Oh, my. Google has just told me that The Actor is Tim Woodward.
And Now I am a moron.
He was in Mad Dogs, which was why I recognised him. Oh, bumf. I wish I'd realised that before.)
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