Playwright: Joe DiPietro
At: Theatre at the Center, 1040 Ridge Road in Munster Phone: (219) 955-5566; $30
Runs through: July 13
In romantic comedies, nurses rank second only to kindergarten teachers as prime wife-and-mother material. So it's natural that
the prospective bride promoted by Nick Cristano's grandparents should be a Woman In White (pink scrubs, actually). But Shana
Goodsell takes a role written as a standard-issue ingenue wheelbarrowed in as the plot requires, and endows it with a sturdy poise
that indicates to us that even if she's not the girl for our hero, she's probably a damn good nurse.
Joe DiPietro's Over The River And Through The Woods might be set in New Jersey. Its first and second generation Italian-
American families might share with the Jewish tribes dominating this genre an ethos based on 'Faith, Family and Food.' The plot
might involve an array of meddlesome geezers. And the text might include a scene in which a young man of nearly 30 years
proclaims 'I'm an adult! I can take care of myself!' But these are not facile stock types inviting only our scorn, such as one finds in
comedies authored before Neil Simon and Norman Lear changed the face of the American domestic farce.
For one thing, the crisis that so distresses Nick's grandparents is a promotion that will relocate their boy to Seattle—distance
sufficient to SERIOUSLY curtail his visits to the nest. For another, Grandfather Nunzio is ill—with a FATAL condition he conceals lest it
unduly influence Nick's decision. Finally, DiPietro—addressing us through Nick's narrative voice—genuinely LIKES his personae,
depicting them with a humor and warmth wholly free of rancor. You won't find THAT in A Thousand Clowns or Any Wednesday.
Director Michael Weber likes them, too, as does his cast—venerable character actors Vince Viverito, Renee Matthews, Bernie
Landis and Glory Kissel as the nonni Cristano e Gianelli, flanked by Matt Orlando and the aforementioned Goodsell—who inhabit
their personae with never a hint of caricature or condescension, much as they inhabit the stage environment rendered by designers
Angela Miller, Jennifer Lundin and Shelley Strasser Holland cozy enough to move into for the summer. And if they tug at the
heartstrings a little too hard in the final moments, it's only because we're their children and they love us.