All you recovering Sopranos-holics will want to know that writer Carol de Matteo is the mother of Emmy-winning actress Drea de Matteo. She milks the Italian-American working-class idiom for some amusing Ralph Kramden moments, and she has a playful wink at psychiatry, too, creating a quartet of characters who are good people, however operatic or prickly. But the premise — that Michael is reduced to tears of rage by his lover’s chosen wedding color scheme and then driven to ice-swan-wrecking revenge by the mother who wants him to have more agency in his relationship — is strained. And the long-ago family-rending tragedy that began with soap bubbles floating over a Little League field and ends in bond-forging revelation at the Ritz seems both hoky and surreal. Engel and the gruff Roger Serbagi extract more genuine comedy from Angelo’s toilette, which concludes with his pouring a shot from the mini-bar and then popping open a spring water — not to dilute his drink but to slick back what’s left of his hair.
Related:
Daddy’s girl, The best on the boards, ‘Bring us your worst . . . ’, More 
- Daddy’s girl
Repressed, talented women lurk in the background of Western cultural history.
- The best on the boards
There have been a few muggings on the rialto this year.
- ‘Bring us your worst . . . ’
Mike brought his creation to a climax with high-pitched keening — part orgasm, part death knell — before swooning onto the stage.
- Cool drink on a hot day
Alan Ayckbourn has been often dismissed as the British Neil Simon. He's also been hailed as a playwright of such acute insight that, if you look beyond the laughs, he deserves to be mentioned in the same critical breath as Harold Pinter.
- Indie bands are better than groundhogs
Another indie rock show? It’s 10 degrees outside. I don’t know these bands. I’m a cranky Bostonian. Fuck indie rock shows. But this one actually might be worth it. Here are the ten reasons why you should come.
- Joan Didion on stage, Spalding Gray on the page
The 90-minute theater piece differs from the memoir in ways other than its relative slimness. It's more of a linear journey.
- Back Beat
On a Sunday afternoon in December of 1997 I hooked up with the poet Jim McCrary at a Greenwich Village saloon.
- Say what?
Good news for perplexed suburbanites: a new site called UnderstandRap.com lets experienced rap interpreters explain difficult urban slang to hip-hop neophytes.
- Winter's tales
The cold season heats up on Boston boards
- S.O.S. in the Biggest Little
What a joyful time in the Ocean State.
- From the ashes
Honest, perceptive, and keenly felt, The Good Life — the story of two couples’ furtive, hesitant stabs at happiness in the brave and fearful new world of post-9/11 New York — is McInerney’s most mature and affecting book yet.
- Less
Topics:
Theater
, Entertainment, Radiohead, Justin Bond, More
, Entertainment, Radiohead, Justin Bond, Scott Pask, Sharon Fogarty, Health and Fitness, Mental Health, Performing Arts, Billy Joel, Theater, Less
