Broadway in Pittsburgh - "A Bronx Tale"

"A Bronx Tale" began its life as a one-man play by actor-writer Chazz Palminteri about his life as a young boy and man growing up in  New York City and his interactions with Sonny, the local wiseguy who oversaw various underworld activities in the Bronx neighborhood where he grew up.  In 1993, it became a movie that was directed by Robert De Niro and starred both Palminteri as Sonny and De Niro as Lorenzo, the honest bus driver who strove to keep his son, Calogero, from falling into the life led by Sonny and his crew.  In 2016, "A Bronx Tale" opened on Broadway as a musical, a musical that is now touring nationally and that is now playing in Pittsburgh as part of the Broadway in Pittsburgh series.

We recall watching this movie back in 2011 at the urging of our good friend Bill  Montrose, and we enjoyed it a lot, as you can read here....

https://grandstander.blogspot.com/2011/10/movie-review-bronx-tale.html

However, when we saw that this would be a part of the series this season, we really didn't know what to expect.  As my friend Wendy often tells me, sometimes going into something with reduced or low expectations can be a good thing, and that was certainly the case last night.  Dan, Susan, Marilyn and I were completely blown away by this show last night.  To paraphrase what I wrote about the movie in the post linked above, the play is about the Mob, it's about family values, it's a coming of age story, it's funny, and it's deadly serious, and in this iteration of the story it has some great songs and terrific dancing numbers.  Unless you are a regular listener to the Broadway channel on Sirius XM, you won't know any of the songs, but they are all really good and fit the show perfectly.  Our favorite was the eleven o'clock number, "One of the Great Ones", sung by Sonny to Calogero.

As always, I am in awe of the talent of the actors who perform in these shows.  The names are not familiar to me, but their credits in the Playbill are always a mile long, so I want to recognize the three main stars of this company of "A Bronx Tale":  Jeff Brooks as Sonny, Alec Nevin as Calogero, and Nick Fradiani as Lorenzo.

There are five shows remaining in this season of Broadway in Pittsburgh, and it is hard to imagine that any of them will top "A Bronx Tale".  It gets the full Four Stars from The Grandstander.