The cast are game and energetic. They all have their moments (I loved Wooddell's blissed-out response to a kiss), but Latessa and DeVito are especially good. You can see and hear DeVito's famous dad in every one of her scenes; her deadpan boisterousness must make him proud. Latessa, the veteran performer best known as Harvey Fierstein's husband in the Broadway musical Hairspray, has a Borscht Belt spirit and the kind of timing a young comic would kill for. Commedia thrives on cultural stereotyping — the actors would land in a new town, spend the day soaking up local references and gossip, and flatter their audience by sending up the other places they'd passed through. Latessa handles this kind of broad putdown humor masterfully; it's commedia by way of the burlesque house. DuBois's skillful staging takes advantage of all the corners supplied by Alexander Dodge's nifty, forced-perspective set, and Rui Rita's lighting design achieves moments of real beauty. The show isn't perfect, but it's rarely less than pleasurable.
Related:
Sox trump comedy, Play by Play: May 1, 2009, Autumn garden, More 
- Sox trump comedy
"Being bitter is poison and bitter will kill you. Bitter is a root that will grow a poopy tree of death."
- Play by Play: May 1, 2009
Theater around town
- Autumn garden
It's freshman and sophomore year on the Boston rialto, with American Repertory Theater artistic director Diane Paulus introducing her first season and Huntington Theatre Company honcho Peter DuBois endeavoring to survive his second.
- Mars vs. Venus
It’s been 21 years since Speed-the-Plow first milked the cravenness of Hollywood and the self-described “whores” who turn its celluloid tricks. But David Mamet’s scathing, staccato comedy has held up at least as well as Madonna, who made her Broadway debut in the original 1988 production.
- Play by Play: May 22, 2009
Boston's theater schedule
- Interview: Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs
"Opera fans have often puzzled over the fact that Poppea does not appear to have a character the audience wants to root for, since everyone has seriously objectionable traits."
- Springer vs. Nero!
Two opera productions overlapping at the Calderwood Pavilion exploit exploitation.
- Teachers and students
Several of this fall's promising jazz performances are clustered around the week of October 18. That marks the 40th-anniversary celebration of the jazz-studies program at New England Conservatory, which, created by Gunther Schuller, established NEC as one of the international twin beacons of jazz education in Boston along with Berklee College of Music.
- Kosher comic
Judy Gold sashays into a press conference with a white apron over her jeans and a tray of rugelach in her hand.
- Undiscovered country
A young woman steps off the Elevator Styx into a Hades ruled by Pee-wee Herman.
- Love and politics
In Boleros for the Disenchanted , Puerto Rican–born José Rivera looks beyond the fairy dust and sexual spark to probe the full meaning of “till death do us part.”
- Less
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