Playwright: Bobby Moresco, Joseph Pistone, & Leo Rossi
At: Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, 777 N. Green St.
Phone: ( 312 ) 733-6000; $39-$55
Runs through: open run
Fact: The members of the Mafia/Cosa Nostra/'Mob' are cold-blooded thugs, obsessed with money and power, who murder as casually as tyrants of old crying 'off with their heads!' Fact: Playgoers will not pay admission to hear about people they don't like. Fact: Many playgoers claiming to loathe these inhumane predators are secretly fascinated with their practices—indeed, they fantasize about BEING them.
For six years, federal agent Joseph D. Pistone immersed himself in the world of organized crime, gathering names and information that eventually led to several convictions. Since his retirement, he has crusaded ceaselessly against the Hollywood myth of the gangster as romantic outlaw or droll buffoon. But live performance presents difficulties that literature doesn't—namely, how do you convince self-professed law-abiding citizens to sit through exposés of repellent subcultures without invoking the very falsehoods you deplore?
To some extent, The Way Of The Wiseguy follows the formula established in The Godfather and its cinematic sequels: the 'good' criminals have families and hobbies while the 'bad' criminals are all business. In this one-man show, our narrator is played by the choirboy-charming Leo Rossi. Lefty, his gruff never-seen mentor, is given a wife, a nervous bladder and a mouthful of cute malapropisms. Sonny, his advocate, breeds racing pigeons, and so his photograph depicts him cuddling one of the gentle birds—that's right, EXACTLY like Saint Francis. Some slickly-produced video clips of generic gangster-flick scenes and occasional interruptions by a nubile card-carrying bimbette further distance us from the unsavory deeds with which Pistone confronts us.
But confront us he does, reminding us repeatedly that in this universe, death—sometimes merciful, often not—lurks in every smile and handshake. However much as we may take comfort in identifying with bullies—opening-night spectators chortled heartily when lovable old Lefty roughs up a bystander for telephone money—the grisly facts continue to hang in the air long after the giggles subside. Kinda like the unlucky moke impaled on a butcher's hook, where he remained for weeks before finally dying. Go on—laugh, why don't cha?