Thicker Than Water

Reviewed by Neal Weaver
Theatre West
Extended through March 20

In suburban NYC, the Corelli family business — a construction company — is facing a dire threat. The firm, founded by paterfamilias Dominick (Vincent Palmieri) and henpecked Uncle Albert (David Mingrino), provides employment for Dominick’s elder son Carmine (Johnny Ferretti) and tough-talking butch daughter Marie (Heather Alyse Becker). But Albert’s rich, bossy and generally obnoxious wife Aunt Gertrude (Constance Mellors), has decided the company is lacking in get-up-and-go, and she can do better. She’s going to found a rival construction operation, and use her money and influence to ruin them by taking away their customers.

Tommy (Joseph Bongiovanni), Dominick’s youngest son who resisted the pressure to join the family business and went off to California to be a screen-writer, has been summoned home to deal with the crisis. But Tommy’s a nervous type who breaks out in hives when overwhelmed by anxiety. He’s soon scratching away like mad when he discovers that there are three separate and secret plans by various family members to bump off or otherwise incapacitate the malevolent Aunt Gertrude.  It’s up to him to defuse the plans, and prevent his whole family from turning homicidal. Inevitably, when all three plots are set in motion on the same night, intentions collide, and all hell breaks loose.

Roy Battocchio’s play is a rather generic farce comedy, replete with the usual stock characters and kooky eccentrics: There’s 98-year-old grandma, who’s trigger-happy and lives in the basement where she takes occasional pot-shots at the garbage man (we never actually see her, though we do hear her); the mother, Rose (Mary Garripoli), who thinks all problems can be ameliorated by a good dinner and a plateful of her lasagna; the emotionally unstable, gun-toting kindergarten teacher Meredith Angst (Maria Kress), who is Carmine’s girl-friend; the terminally absent-minded Dr. Flanken (Jack Kutcher); and, of course, the loud-mouthed, bullying Aunt Gertrude.

Director Stu Berg has assembled a cast of pros and deploys them briskly on designer Jeff Rack’s cozy kitchen set, complete with framed photographs of two popes and John F. Kennedy. Much of the humor is broad, obvious, and predictable, but it’s made more palatable by the skill of the performers. Particularly engaging are Garripoli’s garrulous, food-obsessed mother, and Kutcher’s scatter-brained doctor.

Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Boulevard West, Los Angeles. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; Extended through March 20. (323) 851-7977 or www.theatrewest.org. Running time: Two hours and 10 minutes with one 15-minute intermission.