• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Red sauce and water

December 2, 2016 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the new musical version of A Bronx Tale. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

When should a movie be turned into a Broadway musical? “Never” is a big word, but the better the film, the longer the odds that it won’t survive the transformation without major damage. That’s why I had low hopes for “A Bronx Tale,” the new stage version of the 1993 coming-of-age movie directed by Robert De Niro, who has also co-directed the musical in collaboration with Jerry Zaks. It’s a fine little film, by turns sweetly poignant and tough-minded—so fine, in fact, that it’s hard to see how it could be improved by adding songs and dances. And that’s what’s wrong with the musical: It takes everything that was good about “A Bronx Tale” and waters it down until it’s as tasteless as a fast-food milkshake.

a-bronx-tale-musicalThe book is by Chazz Palminteri, who wrote both the original screenplay and the 1989 one-man autobiographical play on which it was based, and it’s as faithful to the source material as you’d expect. All three versions tell the story of Calogero (here played as a child by Hudson Loverro and as a grownup by Bobby Conte Thornton), a bright kid from the Bronx who is forced to decide whether to follow in the footsteps of Lorenzo (Richard H. Blake), his hard-working, straight-arrow father, or Sonny (Nick Cordero), the local Mafia chieftain to whom he becomes attached as a boy.

It’s clear right from the start, though, that this new version, unlike its predecessors, will be earthbound, a show in which nothing ever happens that isn’t obvious….

Everything unfolds with predictably smooth Times Square professionalism, and I can imagine the results appealing to fans of “Jersey Boys” (including the dances, which were choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, who worked on that show as well). But for all its slickness, “A Bronx Tale” is nothing more than a weightless comic-book adaptation of the movie on which it’s based…

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Excerpts from the Broadway version of A Bronx Tale:

A scene from the film version of A Bronx Tale:

Filed Under: main

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

December 2016
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Nov   Jan »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Just because: Gore Vidal talks about The Best Man
  • Almanac: Gore Vidal on the will to power
  • Verbal virtuosity
  • Jump-starting an arts revival
  • Replay: Alfred Hitchcock talks to Dick Cavett

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in